Secret Recipe Club August: Uber Lemon Ice Cream and Chocolate Coconut Cake

Chocolate coconut cake

Dansk version følger i separat indlæg! / Danish version will follow in a separate post!

I learned about the Secret Recipe Club through a fellow Danish blogger, and just made it to join the August round - my first assignment was Cheap Ethnic Eatz, written by Evelyne in Canada.
This was a perfect beginning for me, since Evelyne writes about food from basically all over the world - she seems to have a very varied taste, just like me.

Besides from posting interesting recipes (among others for some quite untraditional ice cream - luckily, I love ice cream), Evelyne is also very good at explaining where certain ingredients or meals come from, and it has been fun reading stories about things you use, but didn't know the origin of.

Apart from that, she also participates in a lot of different challenges (like SRC), where she has to cook with certain ingredients, and that also results in some interesting projects.

I spent a few days looking for THE recipe to try out, and finally I ended up with 2 that I had a difficult time choosing from.

The first one was the Uber Lemon Ice Cream. We recently bought an ice cream machine, one of those with a compressor so we can make ice cream whenever we want, without having to wait for the bowl to freeze for a day and eternity first. Lemon ice cream has been on my to-do list since we got the machine, so this was a good excuse to finally get around to it. 

The second one was the Chocolate Coconut Cake. I don't really bake a lot of cakes, but I would like to do it more. And since all the ingredients were already available in the pantry, and I like coconut - and chocolate/cocoa - this seemed to be a good choice.

Choosing between the 2 recipes turned out to be so hard that I decided to make them both. and serve them together. Evelyn mentions in the ice cream recipe that the lemon flavour is very strong, so I thought it might be a good idea to serve something with it, in case it was too tangy for my guest (another food blogger - the perfect guest for a SRC project!) - and lemon and coconut/chocolate seemed to be a nice match.

So - here are the recipes, with the changes I made.

Uber lemon ice cream (using ice cream machine):

 - adapted from Cheapethniceatz

approx. 3/4 liter

Notes:
- I followed the recipe when it comes to ingredients, but used normal whipping cream instead of heavy cream, as we don't have anything with that name in Denmark. Whipping cream in Denmark has a fat content of 38% and no additives - I am not really sure about the heavy cream, as I have found different explanations. But anyway, I always use whipping cream when an ice cream recipe calls for heavy cream, with excellent results so far.

- Evelyn doesn't specify which kind of milk she uses, so I just used milk with 0,5% fat, which is what we normally have in the fridge.

- I wasn't exactly sure if everything should be wisked together before putting it in the ice cream maker, or just mixed lightly, or if the sugar should simmer with the milk to properly dissolve - but I was afraid the sugar wouldn't dissolve if not heated. So I warmed the sugar with the milk, cream and lemon peel (to extract as much flavour as possible) until sugar was dissolved, and then let it cool a bit, before I added the lemon juice. 

- I let the mixture rest in the fridge overnight to allow the flavours to develop.

Ice cream and cake served with some blueberry syrup

1 cup sugar

1 cup milk - 0,5% fat

1 cup whipping cream (or heavy cream if available) - 38% fat

1/4 tsp fine salt

finely grated peel from 1 organic lemon (like Evelyn, I used a Microplane grater for this - and I love it too!)

juice from 3 lemons, a little less than 2/3 cup (doesn't have to be organic, but that's what I always buy in order to be able to use as much as possible from the lemons, so organic juice is what I used)

4-5 drops of yellow food colouring (optional - I used it)

Bring sugar, milk, cream, salt and lemon peel to a simmer in a saucepan, and let it simmer at low heat until sugar is just dissolved. Let the mixture cool a bit, and then mix with the lemon juice.

Let cool completely in the fridge overnight to allow the flavours to develop. Mix in the yellow colour, if using it, until the colour is the way you like it. (I think I used approx. 1/4 teaspoon, but it didn't really get all that yellow).

Prepare the ice cream maker according to directions, and pour in the mixture. Let it freeze in the machine until it becomes thick and creamy, and either serve it immediately, or freeze it in a closed container until solid. 
It can easily be scooped directly from the freezer (actually it will start to melt quite quickly), so no need to take it out before you want to serve it.

Conclusion:

Perfect lemon ice cream! Just the right amount of tanginess - at least for me. You have to really like lemons to like this ice cream - but I guess if you don't, you wouldn't be making it in the first place. 
It also has the perfect creamy consistency when made in the ice cream maker, so there is no doubt that I will go back to this recipe if I am making lemon ice cream again.

Chocolate coconot cake:

 - from Cheapethniceatz

Notes:
- I followed the recipe, and again, used 0,5% milk.

Nice and moist

300 g melted butter

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used a low-fat version since that's what I had)

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

1½ cup sliced coconut + a little extra for top of cake, and for garnish

1½ cup flour

1½ tsp baking powder

3/4 cup milk - 0,5%

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl until they are just combined - be careful not to overmix.

Grease a 24 cm spring form with cooking spray or melted butter and pour in the batter. Put some extra coconut slices on top of the cake and bake it for approx. 50 minutes. If the coconut starts to brown too much, cover loosely with tinfoil.

Check with a toothpick in the middle of the cake after 40-45 minutes - if the batter doesn't stick, it is done.

Let the cake cool a bit in the spring form and then remove it to cool completely on an oven rack. Garnish with coconut slices and serve.

Conclusion:

As Evelyn also concludes, the texture of the sliced coconut adds a lot to this cake, as opposed to using shredded coconut.

The cocoa taste is great, and you wouldn't really know that there isn't any "real" chocolate in this cake (that is, if you use a proper quality of cocoa powder). 


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