{"id":2109,"date":"2012-02-03T18:27:44","date_gmt":"2012-02-04T00:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=2109"},"modified":"2012-02-12T18:28:14","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T00:28:14","slug":"confessions-of-a-cheapskate-date-ice-cream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=2109","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Cheapskate: Date Ice Cream"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none\"><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fthesoupblog.com%2F%3Fp%3D2109&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=true&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;width=450&amp;height=30\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width: 450px; height: 30px;\"><\/iframe><\/div><div id=\"attachment_2111\" style=\"width: 452px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?attachment_id=2111\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2111\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2111\" class=\"size-large wp-image-2111   \" title=\"Hadley Sign\" src=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Hadley-Sign-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"442\" height=\"332\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Hadley-Sign-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Hadley-Sign-100x75.jpg 100w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Hadley-Sign-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Hadley-Sign.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 442px) 100vw, 442px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2111\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mind If We Dance With Your Dates?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I\u2019m going to out my mother here.<\/p>\n<p>You may not know this, but my mom has a long and well-deserved reputation for scratch baking. Everything she makes, from pecan tarts and coffee cloud sponge cake to divinity fudge and Winnie the Pooh birthday cakes is made from a host of raw materials that she blends into delicious and often beautiful finished products.<\/p>\n<p>Did I say everything? Make that almost everything. When we were kids, one of our favorite cookies was the date bar. These were made, obviously, from the fruit of the date palm. They were also made\u2026 from a mix.<\/p>\n<p>(Gasp!)<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m not knocking it or putting it down or anything. I\u2019m just saying it. Personally I am a huge fan of the Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownie mix they sell at Costco (which means 6 batches\/box) and I love the convenience of being able to do nothing more than stir some oil and an egg into the mix and \u201cVoila!\u201d Brownies.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s not really baking.<\/p>\n<p>There, I said it. And if saying that makes me a snob, then I\u2019m a snob. (Notice how I\u2019m outing myself now?) Yet that feeling of superiority, although fun, is not the real reason I bake from scratch. What I\u2019m all about is the expense.<\/p>\n<p>(<em>Boy, talk about burying the lead.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>Yes, at my core, in my heart-of-hearts, I\u2019m a cheapskate. Stuck at some pre-adolescent stage of development, I always want to spend as little as I can. Did I mention that I\u2019m half Scottish? That\u2019s why I always look for the cheapest thing on the menu. It\u2019s why I do most of the carpentry and electrical repairs around the house. It\u2019s even why I shop at Costco.<\/p>\n<p>That whole issue of savings is why baking from a mix gives me such conflicting feelings. I am wildly attracted to the labor saving nature of baking mixes. The problem is that they also cost more than baking from scratch. So what do I value more, my money or my time?<\/p>\n<p>Good question.<\/p>\n<p>When I was younger and had all the time in the world, saving money was more appealing. Now that I\u2019m less young, I\u2019m not so sure.<\/p>\n<p>What I\u2019d really like is to spend the time and money on my family. And if that means working in the kitchen with my girls, then scratch baking gives us more time together. If that means enjoying our meals (including desserts) together, it doesn\u2019t matter how the food was prepared, or even if we take out.<\/p>\n<p>(Double gasp!)<\/p>\n<p>So sometimes I\u2019ll make the ice cream, sometimes we\u2019ll get it at the store and still other times we\u2019ll go out to Dairy Queen or Oberweis. When it comes to date ice cream, however, the only place to go is Hadley\u2019s fruit stand out on I-10 near Palm Springs. (The date shakes are especially good.) But when you\u2019re as cheap as me, that\u2019s way too far to go.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re not in California anymore, Dorothy.<\/p>\n<p>So I made my own.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Date Ice Cream<br \/>\n<\/strong>(about 1\u00bd quarts)<br \/>\n1 \u00bd cup milk<br \/>\n\u00be cup sugar<br \/>\n2 T flour<br \/>\nA few grains salt<br \/>\n2 eggs or 3 yolks (pasteurized, if possible, see note)<br \/>\n1 \u00bd cup cream<br \/>\n1 \u00bd cups pitted dates<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Heat milk to 180-190\u00baF with sugar, flour and salt, stirring until thick, cover for 10 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Beat eggs and add \u00bd cup of mixture while beating, then add eggs to mixture.<br \/>\n<strong>HEALTH NOTE:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Since you\u2019re dealing with eggs here, you need to take care when cooking the custard. Too much cooking and the custard gets lumpy, too little and you risk salmonella.\u00a0 Another alternative is to use pasteurized eggs.<\/li>\n<li>Heat the mixture for one minute over medium heat, then cool with plastic wrap or wax paper pressed onto the top of the mixture to keep it from developing a skin. Cool for several hours or overnight.<\/li>\n<li>Place the dates in the custard base and puree the whole mixture with an immersion blender. (Note: You might be better off pureeing the dates with a bar blender or a food processor. The thickness of the dates left my immersion blender about ready to blow. So be careful)<\/li>\n<li>Freeze in an ice cream freezer for about 35 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Put the now frozen ice cream into the freezer for a couple of hours to give it a chance to firm up.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>NOTE: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>When freezing ice cream, you need to use an ice cream freezer to ensure that a certain amount of air is mixed into the frozen cream. This gives it a lighter, less icy consistency. When freezing sorbet, you may also freeze it in a popsicle mold, a bowl or on a sheet pan. Be sure to stir the mixture occasionally to limit the size of the ice particles. Larger chunks of ice make for granita, miniscule chunks make for a nice smooth sorbet (an ice cream freezer is ideal).<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo Credit: \u00a0<\/em>The sign for Hadley\u2019s Fruit Orchards near Cabazon, California. Not my own image.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Okay, this may be a bit off topic, but when I was a kid, I was a pushover for all of the highway attractions we\u2019d pass on our many family car trips. Wall Drug in South Dakota, the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose and Hadley\u2019s Date Farm were all places I wanted to stop, but my folks wouldn\u2019t let us. Now that I have kids of my own, we\u2019ve been to almost all these places, not to mention at least one \u201cMystery Spot.\u201d What are your roadside favorites? Let me know in a comment.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m going to out my mother here. You may not know this, but my mom has a long and well-deserved reputation for scratch baking. Everything she makes, from pecan tarts and coffee cloud sponge cake to divinity fudge and Winnie the Pooh birthday cakes is made from a host of raw materials that she blends [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,159,134],"tags":[162],"class_list":["post-2109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dairy","category-dates","category-ice-cream","tag-dates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2109"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2121,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109\/revisions\/2121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}