My Fifth Day at the Market

I had a disappointingly slow day at the market yesterday, and no friends showed up to surprise me. But I met a cool woman who told me it was great that I bring metal spoons for people to use when tasting. She said she was happy I wash my spoons (as opposed to throwing out plastic ones), and I said, "As far as you know," with a big grin on my face. And I quickly added, "Just kidding." 😆 She said something like, Yeah, you might just lick them really well.

She told me she frequents a coffee shop that puts out real spoons for stirring in sugar and milk and a container of water in which to deposit the used ones. Maybe I should do that latter part. Some people seem reluctant to put their dirty spoons in the cloth bag I bring, but it's easy enough to throw it in the clothes washer with other laundry after putting the dirty spoons in our dishwasher.

It seemed like there were an unusually high number of dogs at the market yesterday, including an adorable, young, female basset hound. The woman who was walking her stopped a good deal in front of my cart and said "Huge Hound" loud enough for me to hear. I said, "Yup," and gave her a smile, but she didn't come over to the cart then or later in the day; she was at the market for a while, and I kept hoping she'd try my products or, at the very least, let me pet on her pup and talk basset hounds with me for a while.

A couple who have become regular customers of mine had their beautiful, scruffy-faced, mixed-breed, black dogs with them again, and I found out the dogs' names are Rudy and Carla. I told them the huge hound was a Rudy.

Because I have a good deal of inventory left, I'm not going to schedule a production day this week. I did manage to sell the last of my Blackberry Vegan Frozen Dessert yesterday. And among my ice creams, the Lemon Verbena and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough were the best sellers. Pointing out on my sign that the cookie dough was gluten-free netted me at least one sale I wouldn't otherwise have gotten.

This Week's New Flavors: Lemon Verbena (Dairy) and Chocolate-Mint (Vegan)

I made Lemon Verbena Ice Cream and Chocolate-Mint Vegan Frozen Dessert today. The herbs, pictured at left in the trunk of my car just before I left for the CR&GC this morning, came from both Sandbrook Meadow Farm and my deck garden.

Lemon verbena is probably my favorite scent. It's no wonder it's long been used in perfumes, because aside from its strong lemon aroma, it's got a floral air about it.

Kurt was at the club with me today. (Because I'm not a member, I need a chaperone whenever I work in the kitchen.) He and his 9-year-old grandson, Tristan, both raved about this ice cream. Tristan said it was better than you get at an ice cream parlor. Woot!

The last time Kurt joined me at the club—on a day when I made Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream—we talked a lot about herbs. Today, he brought me a clump of pineapple mint that I'm going to plant outside as soon as I'm done writing.

The Chocolate-Mint was made in the same way as my Chocolate-Ginger VFD: I steeped my flavoring ingredients (many sprigs of spearmint and peppermint) in a mixture of hemp milk, flax milk, and refined coconut oil. At the end of the process, I added Enjoy Life–brand dark-chocolate and semisweet-chocolate chips to my warm VFD base and stirred until the mixture was smooth. Enjoy Life chocolate chips are free of pretty much everything you could think of that might cause an allergic or autoimmune reaction, including potato and sesame.

Neither of my new frozen desserts is terribly photogenic; one is solid white, and the other is solid brown. But I'm confident you'll find them to be enticing if you give them a taste at the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers' Market on Sunday.

A Very Social Day at the Market

Dani, one of my BFFs from college, and her husband, Brian; Pat, one of my dearest friends and someone I used to work with at my previous employer; and Debbie, an artist friend from my college days, and a friend of hers and their daughters all independently stopped by the market yesterday. So did my local friend Betsy. I see her husband, Carl, regularly at the market; he serves as a Hunterdon Land Trust trustee, and he also hosts the "Into the Garden" show on WDVR.

Dani and Brian traveled the farthest, from Havertown, Pennsylvania. They were on their way to visit her brother in Bound Brook, New Jersey, and decided to stop in Flemington to pick up ice creams to take there. Here's a photo Brian took of Dani and me that I snagged from Facebook:

I'm getting some repeat customers. Another woman who passed by my cart said she was still working on the ones she'd bought from me another week and was enjoying them.

My ice creams are generally selling better than the VFDs, but I'm happy to be offering the latter: One woman bought all three flavors of VFD for her daughter, who can't eat ice cream. Another woman told me she has trouble digesting dairy but is still tempted by it, so she's grateful to have my nondairy options.

I'm not going to pick fruit at Phillips Farms today because I've still got a few pints of my Peach Melba VFD and several pints of my Blueberry-Lime. I'm planning instead to make two herbal flavors this week: Because Lemon Verbena was my fastest-selling dairy ice cream—and my friend Desirée missed out on it a couple weeks ago—I'm making it again. And because I'm sold out of my Chocolate-Ginger VFD, I'm going to make a variation using mint instead of ginger.

My Fourth Week of Production: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream and Peach Melba Vegan Frozen Dessert

On Wednesday, I made my most-fun ice cream so far: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. I think it's going to be a hit.

For the dough, I followed the Chips Ahoy! recipe from BabyCakes Covers the Classics with one exception: I omitted the baking soda. Because this dough doesn't need to rise.

Here's a photo of my big mass of dough, which was a tripling of the recipe in the book, or enough to make 108 cookies:

Why would I use a vegan and gluten-free cookie dough in a dairy ice cream? I'm glad you asked yourself that question, Bill. While it's true that many people who can't digest gluten also can't digest dairy protein, others can and so would appreciate a GF ice cream. And I also wouldn't want to use raw egg in an unbaked dough. And I also happen to really like this dough and have made several batches of actual baked cookies from it over the years. Although I have to say, when I started consuming a pint of this ice cream the past two nights, I found myself wanting more sweetness in the cookie dough. Maybe that's because freezing it reduces the sensation of sweetness. Because I haven't found the cookies I've baked to be undersweet.

I asked my new best girlfriend Sheila, who worked with me in the CR&GC kitchen Wednesday and today, whether she found the cookie dough to be sweet enough. She said she did, but she thought the vanilla ice cream could be more vanilla-y. I'm looking forward to getting feedback from customers about this flavor on Sunday. I think it's very good, but I imagine it could become even better.

Today, I made a new vegan frozen dessert flavor, Peach Melba. I didn't think it was going to happen until next week, and I'll tell you why.

As you can tell if you've been keeping up with my blog here, I've settled into a pattern of picking fruit at Phillips Farms on Mondays to use in an ice cream or VFD later in the week. This past Monday, I picked red raspberries and peaches to make a VFD out of; almost exactly four years ago, when Tony and I were living in the West Village—and we still had our Rudy boy, the canine inspiration for the Huge Hound brand—I made a wonderful Peach Melba Sorbet that I wanted to re-create as a VFD.

The peaches were rather hard when I picked them. I wasn't sure at the time which day I was going to be able to use the kitchen, but I wanted to make everything in one day, if I could, to save on rental expenses. I read online that if you want to hasten the ripening of peaches, you should store them in a bag; the ethylene released by the fruits is said to speed up the ripening process.

I did that. And I ended up with one soft peach and many others that were still hard and covered in fuzz. Of the moldy, not the natural peach fuzz, variety.

This morning, I drove to Solebury Orchards, a wonderfully inviting farm with a store that's so charming, you want to put a La-Z-Boy recliner in the corner, let a friendly dog cozy up next to you, and settle in for the day with a book and several cups of tea. It's just over the Pennsylvania border and a place I'd been meaning to revisit sometime soon anyway.

There were two women at SO who made it possible for me to pull off my Peach Melba VFD today. They searched through some baskets of peaches that were considered seconds (even though they looked perfectly fine to me) and found about 20 that would be ripe enough for me to use today. Woot!

I learned a couple things about peaches today from those ladies: The fruits lose a bit of sweetness if you leave them on the tree until they're perfectly ripe and soft; that's why they're picked in a state that requires you to wait a couple days or so before you can eat them. Also, do not put them in a bag to ripen, no matter what it says on the Internet; put them in a warm spot with air circulation.

After peeling and pureeing the peaches in a blender, and adding some lemon juice to offset the browning caused by oxidation, I made about 17 cups of peachy goodness. To hedge my bet on the sweetness of the peaches, most of which would probably have benefited from another day of rest in a sunny location, I added an extra cup of agave beyond what I typically use in a VFD. And in a nod to the vanilla ice cream that's a component of traditional peach Melba, I stirred in 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract after I'd combined my VFD base with the peach puree.

For my raspberry sauce, I utilized a recipe from an ice cream master I've mentioned on here before: Jeni Britton Bauer of Columbus, Ohio–based Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. The sauce consists of just raspberries and sugar, boiled until the mixture reaches 220 degrees Fahrenheit; the recipe is in Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home.

I didn't take a glamour shot of the Peach Melba VFD by itself, so here's a photo of both of the new flavors together:

You can try them both for yourself at the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers' Market from 9 to 1 on Sunday.

My New VFD Flavor This Week

Peaches ...

... and ... 

... raspberries ...

... from Phillips Farms must mean this week's new flavor of vegan frozen dessert is peach Melba.

My Third Day at the Market

I had a respectable day at the market yesterday. I sold many pints, including the last of my Mint Chocolate Chip.*

One of my neighbors at the market said foot traffic yesterday was about half of what it usually is. No doubt because of the intense heat and humidity.

I got helpful feedback on the Lemon Verbena Vegan Frozen Dessert: The flavor wasn't strong enough. After a customer who tried it said that, I tried it again. She was right. It had tasted enough like LV to make it salesworthy when it came out of the machine, but it must have faded in the freezer. One customer after that told me she liked it—maybe she was being kind or maybe she got a particularly verbena-rific bite—but another one agreed with the first customer's assessment. I won't take it back to the market next week.

I sold a Blackberry VFD to a woman whose son has a severe dairy allergy. Another woman praised my Blackberry and Chocolate-Ginger VFDs. Her husband has a restricted diet that prevents him from eating oils, so the refined coconut oil was a deal-breaker. I told them I'd tried making my VFDs with only the two nondairy beverages as my liquids but the texture wasn't creamy enough.

Will stopped by again with his step-daughter, whose name I will ask for again and memorize next time I see them.

My favorite customer of the day was an older fellow whose mind was blown by the concept of blueberry and lime together, in an ice cream. (I didn't dream up that combination, but I added the twist of using lime basil as a component. That link goes to my personal blog, which I've been writing since 2005. Back before Facebook, when blogging was still a big thing.) He tried it and enjoyed it and said he would come back with his wife, but he didn't. And that's OK. Maybe I'll see them next week.

One of the market volunteers was wearing a T-shirt from a used-book store in Massachusetts with the slogan "Books you don't need in a place you can't find" on the back. Ha!

*I initially wrote that I'd also sold the last of my Blackberry VFD, but I later saw I had some more at home in my big chest freezer; I'd only sold all of the pints of Blackberry I'd taken to the market.

My Third Week of Production

I made two ice creams on Tuesday: Blueberry-Lime and Vanilla Fudge. And today, I made Lemon Verbena Vegan Frozen Dessert.

The LV VFD is decidedly small batch and artisanal. I ended up with only nine full containers and one that's about two-thirds full, which I'll use for sampling. I made what I consider a quadruple batch—four times what someone following a recipe for a home ice cream maker would produce. In order to have justified the effort of hauling my ingredients and equipment to the club—and paying for a half day of kitchen rental—I should have octupled it.   

On Monday, I spent about five hours picking blueberries at Phillips Farms. The berries were small, and I was determined to fill two of PF's buckets. I was going to take a break for lunch, but when I saw on my phone it was already 2:30, I just kept going.

I thought the line on the buckets indicated a gallon, but I just poured quarts of water into a bucket, and the line actually marks five quarts. So I picked 2 1/2 gallons of berries.

Some areas of the just-forming berries had the loveliest pale–blue-green color.

On Tuesday, I sorted and rinsed the berries and pureed them in my blender with leaves from this here lime basil plant.

I added lime juice throughout the process, mostly to reverse browning caused by oxidation. I tried the puree after I'd emptied both buckets and used up all my basil. I thought it needed more lime flavor, so I added the zest of four limes and some more juice. I'd considered adding sugar or agave, because the berries weren't overly sweet on their own, but I didn't. And I'm glad I didn't because the final product—which got its sweetness only from the ice cream base—has a nice sweet-tart balance. And my customers who want something richer and sugarier will have that option.

There were two vanilla beans in our spice cabinet at home, so I scraped them into my ice cream base. I also poured in 4 ounces of vanilla extract. In the future, I'm going to use only extract; the beans are simply too expensive.

Here's a little ice cream biz secret I'll let you in on: The vanilla bean specks you see in commercial brands, almost without exception, though Jeni's is one, had already had their essence removed to create extract by the time they were delivered to the factory. Big producers put these flavorless vanilla seeds in their ice creams only for the sake of appearance.

I don't remember where I came across my fudge recipe; I wrote it down on a lined piece of paper many years ago and, like a bad journalist, I didn't acknowledge my source.

It's a doozie: heavy cream, brown sugar, bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened chocolate, and, to give it a nice glossy sheen, unsalted butter. Because I had several bags of coconut palm sugar—a worthy substitute for brown sugar—on my shelf of sweeteners and only one bag of brown sugar and I was making a quadruple batch of fudge, I used a combination of the two sugars, with no detectable difference in flavor.

On Tuesday, I told Sheila I had been singing "that Prince song 'Oh Sheila'" the day before in anticipation of hanging out with her in the club kitchen. Well, mostly I had been singing just those two words, because I didn't really know the lyrics. And, it turns out, I didn't know the artist: That song was a No. 1 hit, in 1985, for Prince–sound-alike Ready for the World.

I'll see you on Sunday at the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers' Market. I'll have those three frozen desserts, plus limited quantities of Blackberry and Chocolate-Ginger VFDs and Mint Chocolate Chip and Coffee ice creams.

My Second Day at the Market

I had a terrific second day at the market on Sunday. The weather was gorgeous, I had surprise visitors, and I sold a lot of pints.

I had saved some coin the week before by not renting kitchen space for another production day, because I still had plenty of inventory to sell. For a while, after the market got rolling and there was the usual high level of foot traffic, I envisioned selling completely out; I was on pace to do so. But things slowed up a bit around 11:30 to noon, so I didn't manage to do that.

I was in a nice, shaded spot between Blue Mist Hollow Farm and the Fired Up Flatbread truck, whose pizzas I need to try sooner rather than later. (I might have been tempted by one this past week, but I inhaled a cinnamon roll from Apple Ridge Farm about 9:30, on top of the breakfast I'd eaten at home, and so I didn't get hungry until it was about time to leave.)

My dear friends Desirée and Bob (I worked with her many years ago at my previous employer; he's her husband) surprised me by turning up mere moments after I'd sold my last pint of Lemon Verbena Ice Cream. Which is the flavor Desirée most wanted to get. *sigh* They bought Coffee and Mint Chocolate Chip and the Chocolate-Ginger VFD instead.

More than one person asked me to confirm that Mint Chocolate Chip and Coffee were two different flavors. I should have used the serial comma!

I was able to offer the Land Trust special of the week: I gave $1 off to those Hunterdon Land Trust members who handed me a coupon.

I was given 10 coupons, which the market manager indicated was a bigger number than the norm. Woot!

Let's see. What else? Oh, I've been taking a bag of small metal spoons I bought at two local flea markets to enable customers to try samples.

A couple people told me they liked that idea, rather than using disposable plastic or wooden spoons.

Tomorrow is my second of two production days for the week, so either tomorrow or Friday I'll write about the new flavors I'll be bringing to the market this coming Sunday.

My First Day at the Market

Today was the first incredibly rainy Sunday all summer. And, naturally, my first day of selling my frozen desserts at the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers' Market.

I rewrote my chalkboard after a couple hours because the excessive moisture effectively erased it. We got downpours almost nonstop from 9, when we opened, until after noon, so the market didn't get anywhere near the foot traffic it usually does. But some diehards came out, including a couple of women who'd mentioned reading in an email or seeing on the HLT's website that I was going to be there with my FDs.

So I met some nice people. And I saw my buddy Will, who was a good friend of mine growing up, for the first time since we graduated high school; he brought his wife and stepdaughter to the market so he and I could catch up, I could meet them, and they could support my business. That was so cool of him.

And I also got reacquainted with Leslie, another friend from years ago, from back when I previously lived in Delaware Township in the early aughts.

I think I sold 13 pints. Lemon Verbena was the biggest seller, maybe because it's a flavor you can't buy commercially. Runner-up was the Mint Chocolate Chip, probably because it's a well-known flavor you can buy commercially.

It's good to have the first day under my belt. I know what to expect next week. And it will be either an easy week or a week off productionwise. I haven't decided yet what I'll do.

I rented a pickup truck and bought bungees and cargo bars to keep my ice cream cart from moving around in the bed and ramps to get it down to the ground. I'm hoping to have a less costly—and less potentially hazardous—method of getting my cart and products to the market before long.

That's a photo of dry ice sublimating in a pot of water back at home. Spooky! As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I had to use dry ice in my cart this week because a crucial piece of equipment that will enable me to freeze the reusable cartridges that came with my cart isn't arriving until tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who played a part in reaching this milestone, especially my Tony, who's been incredibly supportive and helpful ever since I decided to become a frozen dessert entrepreneur.

My Second Week of Production

I finished my second week of frozen dessert production today. I made two flavors of ice cream: Coffee and Mint Chocolate Chip. I grew most of the spearmint and peppermint I used in the latter ice cream, but I also threw in a few sprigs I'd picked on Tuesday at Sandbrook Meadow Farm. Sandbrook Meadow is at the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers' Market on Sundays, and Tony and I are members of its CSA.

Yesterday, I made two vegan frozen desserts: Blackberry, using the berries I'd picked at Phillips Farms on Monday, and more Chocolate Ginger.

This second week went smoother than the first, though I'm still learning the ins and outs of the batch freezer.

I was excited to learn today that the twice-delayed delivery of my hardening cabinet is now on track for Monday. A hardening cabinet, aka a blast chiller or blast freezer, improves the texture of frozen desserts by solidifying them rapidly and preventing the formation of ice crystals.

I'll also use my hardening cabinet to freeze the cartridges that will keep my sales cart ice cold for the entire day at the market. The cartridges must be stored at the super-cold temperature of -30 degrees Fahrenheit before they're placed in the cart. This Sunday, I'll have to use dry ice instead.

Blackberry Picking at Phillips Farms

I picked blackberries this morning at Phillips Farms to use in a vegan frozen dessert I'll make on Wednesday. Phillips will be one of my fellow vendors at the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers' Market, where, barring some unforeseen calamity, I'll be selling my VFDs and dairy ice creams starting this coming Sunday.

I first got to know Phillips at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and at the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan, back when I lived in the city. I'd never visited the actual farm until today.

It's in Holland Township, which, if you're a fan of 1980s science fiction romantic adventure comedies—and who isn't?—may be familiar to you as the home of the Banzai Institute. It took a little over a half hour to drive there. And it took no longer than that to pick what I estimate was 6 quarts of berries.

The plants were much taller than I had expected, reaching some 10 feet off the ground. They were thornless and pretty thick with fruit, although, as you can see in the photos, there were still many that had yet to turn to black from red.

I stayed on the shaded side of my row and was done before the weather got ridiculously hot.

In the coming weeks, I'll make a VFD and/or an ice cream using the farm's gooseberries, raspberries, and/or blueberries.

My First Week of Production

On Wednesday and Thursday, I made my first frozen desserts for sale using my new batch freezer.

If you've ever watched the contestants on Chopped make ice cream, you know what a batch freezer looks like. My machine is smaller than the model in the Chopped studio's kitchen, but it's nonetheless a wonderful piece of equipment that can crank out 3 quarts of ice cream or vegan frozen dessert in about 8 minutes, even when the custard is still rather hot.

I'd reserved the kitchen at the Croton Rod & Gun Club for only a half day on Wednesday, long enough to figure out how to prepare and use the batch freezer and make some Pineapple Sage Vegan Frozen Dessert.

I'd been growing the pineapple sage on our deck. I took that photo in mid-June, so the plants had gotten a good deal bigger by the time I harvested a bunch of sprigs—as much as I thought the plants could safely bounce back from—on Wednesday.

At the club, I steeped the PS in the two biggest liquid components of my VFDs: hemp milk and flax milk.

I removed the sprigs and continued with the rest of my recipe. I'd used a lot of the herb, but I was concerned I needed still more to get the amount of pineapple flavor I wanted.

I poured my finished custard into the machine, and it came out looking like this:

The good news was, the texture was spot-on. The bad news was, it didn't taste like pineapple. My new friend Sheila, who was also working in the club's kitchen that day, agreed with my assessment.

I took the VFD home, put it in the freezer to completely solidify, and ate a bowl of it last night with some blackberries and chocolate chips on it.

It was like the vegan equivalent of Sweet Cream Ice Cream: a blank canvas on which to impose flavorful things. 

Thursday's VFD turned out much better: Chocolate Ginger. It's the VFD flavor I've developed that I'm most proud of. Tony, my husband and biggest booster, says I could roll it out nationally. 😃

I also made a dairy ice cream: Lemon Verbena. I again used sprigs of herb I'd grown myself. Given that I had more of this herb—and its flavor is stronger than that of pineapple sage—I was pretty confident the lemon verbena–ness would shine through. And it did.

I made a rookie mistake while processing the second of three subbatches of the ice cream: I left it in the batch freezer too long, and only a trickle of it came out the little door. The rest was frozen up inside the machine. Sheila helped me scrape it out and into my pot, and then I packed it into pint-size containers.

I'll make some more VFDs and ice creams, in greater volumes, this coming Wednesday and Thursday, and I should be all set to start selling them at the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers' Market outside Flemington on Sunday, July 31.