Summer Sweets

 

With an abundance of goats' milk, fresh summer fruits, and more uninterrupted time at home, we have been indulging in a number of homemade sweets this summer.  With all the summer birthdays, holidays, and visits from extended family, we have all kinds of excuses to make dessert.  This is some of what we've made and consumed during the month of June:

 

Cinnamon Rolls

On the morning of my birthday, my dear husband got up extra early and made these delicious cinnamon rolls from scratch before he left for work.  These are truly the best I've ever had.  Alas, he didn't supply me with the recipe, and I'm not sure he'd find it again on the Internet.  My hubby is not one for actually measuring ingredients or following a recipe closely, so I doubt I could pass along his secret formula anyway.  Every time he makes something, it's never exactly the same as the time before. 

 

 Lemon Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

After my birthday dinner, our daughter presented me with this lemon cake with homemade cream cheese frosting.  What a light, summer treat!  I think she was going for preppy colors with the pink frosting and lime and kelly green sprinkles.  This is the frosting recipe she used from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book:

Cream Cheese Frosting

Beat together 6 ounces of cream cheese, 1/2 cup softened butter, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla till light and fluffy.  Gradually add 3-4 cups of powdered sugar, beating until smooth.  This recipe is doubled to generously cover a double layer cake.  

 

Wild Black Raspberries

Of course, the best summer sweets of all are the ones that come naturally with no work involved.  The black raspberries ripened this week on our mountain and in our yard, and the children have been picking and eating them daily.  I love it when we can easily forage for food in the woods or just walk outside and find fresh, organic, healthy foods.

 

Black Raspberry Goats' Milk Ice Cream

Since the raspberries are plentiful, we've been eating them plain, on cereal, in waffles, and in our weekly batches of hand-churned ice cream.  I'll share our easy recipe with you again:

Homemade Ice Cream

Cook 1 cup of milk/cream to scalding, but not boiling.  Remove from heat and stir in 1 cup sugar and 1/8 teaspoon and salt.  Chill in refrigerator all day.  When you're ready to make the ice cream, pour the cooked milk into the ice cream canister, and add 3 more cups of fresh milk or cream, 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla, and as many raspberries as you like.  Prepare the churn with ice and rock salt, and churn for about 45 minutes.

Strawberry Cake with Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting

A week or so ago when the strawberries were for sale everywhere, our teen baker made another double layer cake with homemade chocolate frosting.  She took a large strawberry and cut it into the shape of a rose and used our chocolate mint leaves to adorn the top of the cake.  She and I are trying to experiment with some of our Pinterest pins this summer, and the strawberry rose was pinned to one of her boards.  This was so popular in our family that our youngest son requested the exact same cake be made for his upcoming birthday in a few weeks.

Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting

Beat 6 tablespoons butter till light and fluffy.  Gradually add about 2 cups powdered sugar and beat well.  Melt 2 ounces semi-sweet baking chocolate, and cool a bit.  Add to the frosting along with 1/4 cup milk and 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla.  Gradually beat in another 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar and additional milk if necessary.

Here's another view.  It tasted as good as it looks.

 

I am a happy camper and am enjoying every aspect of summer, especially the desserts.  Still trying to limit myself to only one per day, as hard as that is sometimes.  Running with my kiddos and Tippy up and down the mountain most every day is enabling me to eat these sweet treats without packing on any more pounds.  Unfortunately, I'm not losing any either. 

Wishing all of you a weekend filled with sweet summer treats of some kind.

Summer Saturdays on the Patio With Yet Another Uninvited Visitor

 

How I love summer weekends spent at home with extended family, lounging on the porches, patio, and by the pool.  Most weekends we make a different flavor of hand-churned ice cream from our goats' milk.  This Saturday we were celebrating our daughter's 8th grade graduation from the only school she's ever attended.  It was rainy at times, but that didn't prevent us from enjoying ourselves outdoors and creating and consuming some of our favorite traditional summer foods.  This vanilla ice cream was our first homemade ice cream in two years since we've been waiting for our goats to become mamas again.  Our 9 year old son even climbed the cherry tree to pick us some ripe cherries to  place atop our dessert. 

 

He was also one of our most diligent churners, and the ice cream turned out perfect.

To get our goats' milk ice cream recipe, you can access it here in Preppy Mountain Farmhouse's archives.

 

As usual, we had an uninvited guest.  This little guy crawled out from under our front porch and hung with us for awhile.  I couldn't find his mother anywhere, and it's odd that he was out during the day.  I felt kind of sorry for him...but not sorry enough to take him in and feed him.  I'm really not keen on having a pet opossum.

 

As we took turns churning ice cream and playing yard beanbag games with the children, Hubby grilled us one of our favorite summer chicken recipes: Chicken Teriyaki.  Below is the recipe for the marinade.

Chicken Teriyaki Marinade

Mix 1/4 cup oil, 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1 teaspoon minced garlic, 1 Tablespoon vinegar, 3 Tablespoons brown sugar, and some dried ginger.  Add about 1.5 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and coat with the marinade.  Refrigerate for at least several hours or overnight.  Put on the grill for about 20 minutes.  If you double the recipe like I did, it easily feeds 10+ people.

 

It is our tradition to sip Gin & Tonics while we churn ice cream, cook out, and celebrate the beginning of summer.  This has always been my beverage of choice in the summer, next to Arnold Palmers, that is.

 

Some vanilla porter was also tested for the first time with a big thumbs up.

 

In fact, some of our guests came up with the idea of combining the porter with the homemade ice cream to create their own version of vanilla beer floats.  And the consensus was that this is a great summer treat to be made again in the future.

My vote hasn't been cast on that yet because I steered clear of that combination, but it seemed to be thoroughly enjoyed.

 

As for our little opossum friend, the last I saw of him he was climbing out of sight.  I'm hoping he hasn't met up with any of the numerous felines on this mountain and he's alive and well...as long as he doesn't take up residence under my farmhouse porch or cabin months from now as an adult.

Two and a half more days of school here, and then it will truly feel like the beginning of summer!

Summer Traditions: Making Ice Cream

One of my fondest memories growing up is attending ice cream socials where every family would bring a different flavor of homemade ice cream.  We also attended annual barn dances where everyone would do the same and sample the flavors after square dancing.  My family had both an electric mixer and a manual churn, and we always felt the hand-churned ice cream was the best.  I have tried to revive this tradition in my own family by making a variety of flavors throughout the summer, especially when we have cookouts with friends and family so everyone gets a turn to churn.  We sit on one of our porches, the patio, or even poolside with our feet in the water during the really hot days of July.  Sometimes the adults even multi-task by imbibing in a Gin & Tonic while churning.

It all starts with our nanny goats and their babies.  We milk the mothers first thing in the morning, and then their babies get to be with them the rest of the day.  That gives us plenty of milk, and no one has to bottle feed the kids.  Of course, cow's milk works too; we just have goats, so that is what we use.  We find that the Nigerian Dwarf goat's milk is so rich that we do not need to use whipping cream; we simply make our ice cream with their milk, leaving the cream in it.  Our churn is a White Mountain ice cream churn, which we are very happy with.  We were able to purchase ours from a local store that carries many Amish goods, but other brands can also be found in the Lehman's catalog.  So far we have made the standard flavors of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, but we have also made peach, cherry, black raspberry, blueberry, Heathbar Crunch, Oreo cookie, and coffee, just to name a few.  Everyone takes a turn churning, even the youngest.  It only takes about 45 minutes, and then we place the churn in the shade with a blanket around it for insulation until we are ready to eat.

Below is the recipe we use.  No cooking and no eggs required.

Basic Vanilla Ice Cream

8 cups of goat's milk with cream intact; 2 cups sugar; 1/4 tsp. salt; 3 tsps. vanilla

Warm (but do not boil) 2 cups of the cream over low heat.  Keep a watch at all times so it does not scorch.  Stir in all of the sugar and salt until dissolved.  Chill in refrigerator overnight.  Add the remaining milk and vanilla with it into the canister of the ice cream freezer the next day.  If you want other flavors, add these at this time too.  Alternate layers of ice and rock salt around the canister and churn.  We check it after about 30 minutes or so to see if it is the desired thickness.  You can usually tell when it is done because it gets much harder to churn.  Ours is typically the consistency of soft-serve ice cream after 45 minutes.  If there are any leftovers, they go into a container in the freezer.  The ice cream is much more solid by the next day.

From toddlers to grandparents, everyone gets a chance to churn!