A few days ago, I saw a post on Facebook from Strauss Family Creamery about how their egg nog ice cream had been spotted at Whole Foods in Palo Alto. We’re only about 15 minutes south of Palo Alto so maybe it’s available at the Whole Foods here too? Maybe? Pretty please?

I’m not even that big of a fan of egg nog… it’s just too rich for me. But I like it in small doses. And yet, I had an unshakable need for egg nog ice cream. Strauss Family egg nog ice cream if possible. So I went to see if there was any to be found. I had the pleasure of sampling some of their vanilla and coffee ice creams at the foodbuzz festival a few weeks ago, and it was dreamy. And incredible… actually words don’t quite do it justice.

But alas, there was no egg nog ice cream at my local Whole Foods so I went home with a quart of egg nog and the inkling that I would make my own. I am not an ice cream expert… at least not when it comes to making it. But my thought was I would look at a basic vanilla recipe and then replace some of all of the milk and cream with egg nog. Seemed logical enough.

So I looked up vanilla ice cream in Baking from my home to yours and started to play with the numbers in my head. It called for six egg yolks. I separated six eggs and stored the whites in the freezer to use later, only then did I remember that egg nog already has egg yolks in it so I probably didn’t need to add six more and give us all instant heart attacks. In fact, I wasn’t sure I needed to add any. But I had all of these yolks staring at me and no use for them except this ice cream, so I added two for good measure.

I used 3 parts egg nog to 1 part milk with a smattering of sugar and a little dusting of nutmeg to round things out. I put it all in a pot over medium heat and waited for it to get thick. But egg nog is already kind of thick so I wasn’t sure how long it really needed to be heated.

So long story short, I put the custard into the refrigerator and waited for it to chill. I got impatient and put it in the freezer for a little while. And then I decided it was cold enough and started to churn the ice cream. It churned and it churned. But it never set.

I had broken the cardinal rule of ice cream making: everything has to be cold. Really cold. Room temperature to lukewarm will not do. Apparently.

The ice cream maker bowl that I keep in the freezer had thawed out completely so the liquid inside sloshed around as I removed it from my kitchen aid mixer. I washed out the bowl and put it back in the freezer. And put the ice cream custard back into the refrigerator. Then I left it alone for 24 hours.

At that point I was not sure that this would really work, maybe it had too much sugar in it. Or maybe the 1/2 ounce of bourbon was too much (as if). But the next day, with everything thoroughly chilled and the work bowl re-frozen, I set it up to churn.

Thankfully, this time I wound up with ice cream. And it tastes good. But next time I think I will use a real recipe. I need to understand ice cream a bit better before I go making substitutions and bending rules. And I will bring a little patience to the table as well.

In the meantime, here are a couple of real egg nog ice cream recipes:

• Egg nog ice cream from Simply Recipes
• Alton Brown’s egg nog ice cream recipe

It turns out to make egg nog ice cream, typically you don’t use ready-made egg nog… you make an ice cream base that tastes like egg nog instead. Go figure.

I woke up this morning to a stream of twitter messages proclaiming that Gourmet is being shut down. I was still in bed. This is not the kind of news that a food lover wants to wake up to. Partly I blame my morning ritual, because if I weren’t so eager to connect first thing in the morning I would not have found out until later… after my morning tea. Instead, I was lying in bed reading my email and then catching up on twitter on my iPhone. The news was almost devastating enough to pull me out of my warm cocoon to verify the news on a real computer… almost. It was chilly this morning, I couldn’t bear the sad news and the cold so I stayed in bed wondering what this could mean for the magazine industry, the food world, and me.

I’m definitely saddened by this. I’ve been a long time admirer of Gourmet, though I only just started my subscription this summer. And in these few short months, I’ve enjoyed several recipes from those pages: peach pie with sour cream ice cream, no-cook strawberry ice cream, and most recently brown butter pound cake. That’s averaging almost one per month since I started the subscription, that’s pretty good (plus many more bookmarked for later). Supposedly they will continue the Gourmet brand online and in their television series (have you seen Diary of a Foodie? Most of the episodes are online. I’m starting to work my way through the first couple of seasons… thanks Brit for pointing me to this series). These are good things, but it can’t replace having that beautiful magazine in hand.

Anyway, I couldn’t believe it and wanted to share the news with you in case you hadn’t heard.

Related:

• Ad slump leads Gourmet, 3 other magazines to close on Yahoo! News
• Condé Nast to Close Gourmet, Cookie and Modern Bride on NY Times’ Media Decoder blog… “Condé Nast tends to hold tight to its prestigious titles, making the Gourmet closing all the more startling. “
• The running commentary on Twitter about Gourmet closing
• And for a kick, check out The First Issue of ‘Gourmet’ Magazine: The January 1941 ‘Holiday Issue’ on Serious Eats.

It started out innocently enough. I was struck with a chocolate craving… a creamy, comforting kind of chocolate craving. This meant pudding. Not just pudding but pudding pie complete with a graham cracker crust. Sounds delicious, right?

There I was standing in Dan’s kitchen, defenseless against the siren song of chocolate pudding pie. I had everything I needed to make chocolate pudding (though honestly this would be my first non-packaged pudding adventure).  I had a few graham crackers leftover from our camping s’mores.  And I had some heavy cream which is mandatory because what is chocolate pudding pie minus the whipped cream? Naked, that’s what. And we can’t have that.  Okay, everything I needed was there in the kitchen.  Or was it?  Wait a second, there is no pie pan in Dan’s kitchen. Had the temptation been mild, the chocolate undertow weak, I may have stopped right there. If I had been patient and wise, I might have waited until I got home where I have not one but two pie pans (Note to self: take one to Dan’s house).  But the pudding gods had spoken and I had no choice but to continue down this path no matter how ill-equipped I might be.

*Light bulb moment*… I will use a muffin tin and make cup-pies.  You know, kind of like Chuck makes in Pushing Daisies Season 1, except mine would be even more innovative in that they’d be pudding pies… aw yeah, I am a genius!  That’s right, warm yourself in the glow of my otherworldly brain powers.  Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time anyway.

I lined each of the 12 cups in the muffin pan with a paper liner because I thought that would be the only way to get it out cleanly… and I was kind of right.  I evenly distributed my graham cracker crust mixture into the cups and pressed it down with the bottom of shot glass. Baked them for about 8 minutes until they filled the kitchen with their intoxicating aroma.  And then I made the pudding.  Did I mention this was my first attempt at homemade pudding?  I’ve made lemon curd and even custard cakes, but never chocolate pudding that did not come in a box. But how hard could it be?

I thought I followed the directions. I thought I cooked it long enough. And then I put the pudding on top of the graham crust-lets.  And the pudding was runny… but I was unfazed. I thought maybe it would firm up in the refrigerator.  Maybe this was how it was supposed to be.  Maybe I should not have gone down the cup-pie path. Hmm. Uh oh and oh well.  I was committed.  So I topped each of the 12 cup pies with whipped cream and stuck them in the refrigerator to chill and hopefully firm up.

It did not firm up. The paper liners barely held together with all of the soupy mess. I managed to get all of it out and into a bowl which was a messy process to say the least. But as Julia Child said, “The grand thing about cooking is you can eat your mistakes.” And eat it we did. Everyone agreed it was a delicious mess. The kids loved it. And Dan declared it the messiest, most delicious thing I’ve ever made. He also thinks it would not taste as good if the pudding had been more pudding-like and less soupy… he thinks the texture would change the flavor as well.  I’m not so sure. I’d like it to be more pudding-y.

I’ll try again sometime soon. Chocolate pudding pie, not soup, is in my future.

In the meantime:
* A successful chocolate pudding pie on Smitten Kitchen
* Chocolate pudding recipe from Simply Recipes