Blizz-Flurry

Not yet Blizz-Flurried...

What is a Blizz-Flurry, you ask? Well, it's just a name I concocted a mere two seconds ago to describe the scrumptious, creamy dessert that every other fast food chain and their parent company carries - the good old soft serve ice cream with a specific topping mixed, swirled, or blended in. Since the majority of the names are copyright or trademarked, I blended two names together, corny pun intended. 

These genius little peanut butter filled pretzel concoctions were sitting idly around on the counter, begging to be consumed. But, since my taste buds were craving sweets, I nearly pushed the pretzel bites aside in favor of a good old scoop of chocolate soy ice cream. Oh the life of the lactose intolerant. 

Just as I retrieved the ice cream container, the cliched, animated lightbulb poofed out of nowhere above my head. Pretzel bites + peanut butter + chocolate ice cream...Blizz-Flurry it is! And thus my first Choco-nut-zel Blizz Flurry was created. I'm a bit shocked that this is the first time I created an ice cream version of a chocolate covered pretzel, but better late than never! The 3 step simplicity of this dessert is always a plus.

- Shortcake

Step 1: Crush!

Step 2: Scoop!

Step 3: Blend!

Ice Cream for Breakfast

Love me some thick slabs of french toast

It's fun to break the rules every once in a while, especially on gorgeous summer mornings that greet you with a smile and encourage you to not hit the snooze button. If you're a night owl like me, you know the rare occurrence is fewer and farther between than a blue moon.

So of course, after an invigorating hour jog at 6:30am, I forgo-ed my usual "healthy, fulfilling" breakfast and indulged in some ice cream (soy based since I'm lactose intolerant) and my favorite breakfast dish - french toast. Sprinkle my favorite fruit on top, set aside some honey for dipping, and you get Shortcake's quick and easy breakfast guilty pleasure.

My go to french toast recipe is by the one and only Alton Brown. I cut thick slices of french or challah bread and kick up the recipe with a generous sprinkle of cinnamon atop both sides of the toast before baking. My favorite part of ice cream atop french toast is when the ice cream melts and lightly sogs the toast. Kinda icky for some, but delicious to me.
- Shortcake

Trilogy of Flavors: Peanut Butter

Trilogy of Flavors: A new feature where we highlight a different flavor every Tuesday, by showcasing a favorite or new recipe we're eager to attack in the kitchen.

Kick off the afternoon with the unique peanut butter sandwich Sandwich is currently craving:

The Elvis Sandwich
"Pudge the fish's sandwich with some banana thrown in." - Sandwich

Spice up the evening barbecue feast with a chicken satay dish Shortcake can't wait to whip up:

Thai Chicken Satay with Spicy Peanut Sauce
"There better be peanuts on deserted islands. Those nuts go with everything." - Shortcake

Cool off and cap the night with Sonic's favorite peanut butter dessert:  

Peanut Butter Swirl Ice Cream
"After chocolate, ice cream is peanut butter's 2nd wife." - Sonic

Breakfast for Dessert

Prior to working in the restaurant kitchen at school, I had my two hot foods culinary courses with Chef Huber, an excellent chef with experience from all over the world.  Two of the major things he stressed in class were the concepts of substitution and utilization, two big words that allow for the arts in "culinary arts."

Have you ever tried a recipe, but didn't have all the ingredients or changed some of the ingredients to your personal tastes?  That's substitution!  Now, that concept doesn't always work, especially in baking where specific ingredients have very specific purposes, depending on their specified amounts.  Anyhow, Chef Huber always encouraged us to substitute wherever we saw fit.

In addition to substitution, utilization is another concept in the kitchen that forces you to get creative, often in conjunction with substitution. A restaurant usually ends up with leftover ingredients, or leftovers of a final product; simply throwing it away would fill up your garbage bin with piles and piles of money (costs to buy the food ingredients, costs to make the dish, profit lost because it was not sold, and costs for the garbage man to take it away).  One example of utilization is taking unused breakfast pastries that never made it to the buffet line (e.g. danish, cinnamon rolls, etc.) and turning them into bread pudding the next day.

These pastries have a future beyond breakfast.

The Pastry Demons in Careme's came upon such a predicament when we held a breakfast service, rather than our usual lunch service.  In addition to having a plethora of leftover danishes and sticky buns, the hot line cooks made an excessive amount of bacon.  By the end of the breakfast, a small hotel pan was still filled with a heaping pile of crispy bacon strips.  The kitchen staff, a.k.a. the students, could only eat so much of the leftovers. Rather than throwing it all away, we could hear echoes of Chef Huber's lectures, "Utilization!  Utilization!  Substitution!  Substitution!"

For fans of my Disney food blog, you are well aware of my success of bacon in pastries (If not, check out my February 6th Superbowl Sunday Brunch); bacon at the pastry station is not a strange concept to the Pastry Demons.  Aliesha was all over the task of using this bacon somehow, and I gave her my full support.  The only thing was, how would we use it?  Well, we had another problem to solve that day; we needed a new flavor to serve with our Ice Cream Trio dessert...

Vanilla ice cream churning with a special ingredient.

Yep, you guessed it! We made up our favorite vanilla ice cream recipe and while it was churning, we added some diced up bacon and swirled in a few spoonfuls of maple syrup as an accompaniment.  The other guys in the kitchen thought we were nuts.  A few cringed at the thought, while others were eager to give it a try once it was done, even if it was a crazy idea.  Churning ice cream takes quite sometime, even with an automatic ice cream churner. While going about our other dessert business, the student chefs in the other stations kept finding a reason to come by our little pastry corner asking, "Is it done yet? Is it done yet?"

Finally, after 30 minutes of turning cream into its popular iced variety, the maple bacon ice cream concoction was ready to sample.  The sweet, creamy vanilla ice cream had a subtle, maple flavor and was balanced with the salty, savory flavor of the bacon bits.  The overall result was a creamy, delicious, full breakfast on a spoon!

We felt like the popular kids in school as word got around that there was bacon ice cream in the kitchen.  One student got such a kick out of it that he ran upstairs to the computer lab and updated his Facebook to tell his friends he just had bacon ice cream.

Our new Ice Cream Trio: Vanilla, Chocolate, and Maple Bacon

- Sandwich

Pastry Demons and their Fancy Pants Desserts

(Continued from "Under Pressure" Tuesday, April 11th)...

Speaking of pressure, it didn't help that Melissa and I had been out of the pastry loop for the past 6 weeks, as we had been in two introductory hot foods classes for our degree program.  Thank goodness Aleisha had taken Careme's before, so at least she was there to help us understand how the class worked.  Basically, you have all morning to prepare anything you might need for that afternoon's service.  The prep work was a big guessing game as we had no idea what would get ordered, even if the guests would order dessert at all.

When first reading the dessert menu, the work ahead seemed gargantuan:

- Pear Frangipan Tart with Spiced Plum Ice Cream, Cinnamon Syrup, Honey-Almond Tuiles

- Chocolate Lava Cake with a chocolate liquid center, Dried Cherry Compote, and Mocha Anglaise

- Ginger Crème brûlée topped with Stone Fruit Chutney and Mint Chiffonade

- Ice Cream Trio (3 different ice cream flavors) with Honey-Almond Tuiles

Not only were we tasked to make four desserts, each dessert had multiple components.  Some things were easy: like mint chiffonade, just pick some mint from our backyard herb garden and chop into strips; and cherry compote, chop up this and that, add cherries, mix it all together.  But oh good gravy, it's been at least six months since we made ice cream in class, and a year since we did frangipan and tuiles!  Now was not the time to freak out. We had to dust off the cobwebs from the basic pastry corner of our brains and remember how to make a classic french style ice cream, using real cream and none of that processed, fakey substitute ice cream you find at the supermarket.

As my old chemistry teacher used to say, "Plan the work and work the plan!"  We made up a list of essential things to get done the first day in time for service the next day when the restaurant would be open.  We agreed to set to work making the basics, like short dough for the pie tarts and a batch of frangipan, a classic French, sweet, paste-like filling made of almond, sugar, flour, eggs, and butter.  Meanwhile, Melissa and I reviewed the method of making Creme Anglaise, the mother dessert sauce of the pastry kitchen so to speak.

From Creme Anglaise, you can make custards, like Creme Brulee, and French Vanilla Ice Cream, or any ice cream for that matter (we'll be making Creme Anglaise and turning it into ice cream for a future "Whip of Dole").  From multiple batches of anglaise, we were able to get the Mocha Anglaise sauce made, Crème brûlée prepped, as well as 4 flavors of ice cream (Spiced Plum, Mocha, Chocolate, and good ol' Vanilla).

Melissa, Aleisha, and I really surprised ourselves those first few days of Careme's.  After the freaking out, and asking ourselves "Uh, what the heck are we doing?" on the first day, we successfully made each of the desserts on the menu.  The skills we had learned in our classes, leading up to making desserts for a real working restaurant, came back like magic.  Chef would occasionally check up on us and ask, "How are my little pastry demons doing?"  We would reply with a spoonful of deliciousness.

He found our chocolate ice cream and spiced plum ice cream to be, and I quote, "Phenomenal."  Though all the credit can't go to us. Chef gave us such a great guiding hand and helped us realize his vision for these desserts, while also letting us get a little creative with our own ideas.  He was really pleased that we did such a great job those first few days, and that the restaurant could serve some fancy pants desserts made by actual student pastry chefs.

I still can't get over the fact that we made this happen.  I don't like to toot my own horn, but we really rocked it out at the pastry station!  As they say, a picture's worth a thousand words:

Pear Frangipan Tart with a scoop of Spiced Plum Ice Cream, a drizzle of cinnamon syrup, Honey-Almond Tuile corkscrew, and a sprig of mint for color

Chocolate Lava Cake with Dried Cherry Compote on a pool of Mocha Anglaise.  We got confused and put the chiffonade mint on this one, but it was a happy accident as it came out nice!

 Chef's special recipe: Ginger Crème brûlée with Stone Fruit Chutney and Mint Chiffonade.

Ice Cream Trio with Honey Almond Tuile. This was actually probably the 4th day, as only one person ordered the trio the 1st day of service and I forgot to take a picture.  Seen here is our Watermelon Sorbet, Vanilla and Chocolate Ice Cream.

Stay tuned for future adventures from Careme's, with Chef's Pastry demons; haha.

- Sandwich

First of Many

Well, hello there.
It's the first post of our first blog and it couldn't be sweeter. I envisioned it to be a joint, three person medley about each of our favorite snacks we enjoy feasting on at the Walt Disney World resort. After all, we're a Disney loving family, what better way to kick off the writing than with a trio of Disney treats? Alas it was not to be. Since two out of three sibs both love the Dole Whip, I figured it better to let Sonic give us a taste of something other than what we based the title of our blog on. And you know what? Now I want a bite of a Mickey ear. And yes, we gave each other nicknames for this blog. That's how we roll. 
- Dole Whip Shortcake


The Ears Have It

The Mickey Premium bar has been a childhood favorite for me, probably because of both the simplicity and the familiarity of it. What's more exciting than an ear-shaped frozen delight? An ear-shaped frozen delight that smiles at you! In elementary school, I loved bringing 50 cents with me in order to buy the Mickey bar, and was sorely upset when the middle schools didn't carry them. The only other place to get them was in Walt Disney World. 

You can imagine my excitement in 2005 when I learned I'd be SELLING these babies on a daily basis. It meant I was spreading the wonder of creamy vanilla ice cream in a rich chocolate coating, and that other people would be partaking in the joy of that *crack* as they bit into one ear. It got even more exciting as guests would give me their cameras and say, "Take my picture, take my picture!" It turned a simple dessert into a rite of passage, a guest did not truly visit the parks unless they ate a Mickey Premium. Or, if they were lactose-intolerant, an Itzakadoozie, which I once heard a guest call the Yakazumayakayaka. But that's another story for another time.
- Dole Whip Sonic


Edit: Since publishing this first post, tragedy occurred across the Pacific Ocean. The NJ Trio's hearts go out to all those affected by the quakes and tsunamis in Japan. Many prayers are being sent their way. Please help in any way you can by donating to the Red Cross or Global Giving.