Happy 37th Birthday to Peabody

If you are a food blogger, you aren't asking who Peabody is right now. You know. You've been to her site and drooled over the pictures. You learned very quickly to not be eating or drinking while reading her posts, unless you like cleaning things up or are interested in buying a new computer.

How about if you aren't a food blogger? Well, have you ever heard of Refund Muffins? Those are Peabody's muffins.

What? You've never heard of Refund Muffins?

Oh my goodness. (Quick, follow the link and go read about them! Remember the warning about food or drink while reading her blog.)

Better now? Good.

Well, last week (yes, I know I'm late,) was Peabody's 37th birthday, which Elle proposed we help her celebrate in true food blogging fashion - by cooking for her! The twist was that we were to cook a recipe of Peabody's, from her blog.

Sure, I could have made Refund Muffins. It would likely have made my kids happy, but I wanted something different, something summery, even if we aren't really experiencing summer conditions. I wanted ice cream.


To heck with the lack of summer, I made ice cream, and really good ice cream. Homemade ice cream that made use of a local fruit and was still smooth and creamy and fabulous 4 days after I froze it (we got side tracked by other events and desserts, how else would ice cream stay in my freezer for so long?)

Raspberry Honey Ice Cream

by Peabody

1 quart raspberries
1/3 cup raspberry honey(or any honey will do, I use a regular honey)
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup half and half (I didn't have any, so used half regular milk and half heavy cream in its place)
1 tsp lemon juice
1- 1 ½ cups sugar(depending on how sweet your berries are)
3 egg yolks
¼ tsp salt

Add the yolks,sugar and honey to a medium-size bowl. Whisk together and then set aside.
Using a double boiler over medium-low heat, add the half and half, cream, raspberries and salt. Regularly whisk the mixture, heating until the temperature reaches approximately 145F. The mixture should begin to turn purple.
Once the cream mixture has reached the desired temperature, slowly add about half of the mixture to the eggs and sugar while whisking vigorously. This will prevent the eggs from curdling. Once the eggs and cream have been thoroughly integrated, pour back the egg mix into the remaining cream.
Whisk constantly and slowly as the mix rises in temperature. Once the temperature has reached 165-170F — or when the mix evenly coats th

e back of a spoon — remove from heat and add the lime juice and vanilla. Whisk them in completely and run through a sieve to remove any raspberries seeds. Move to a new container to cool. The mix can be placed in the freezer for 2 to 3 hours or, preferably, into the refrigerator overnight.
Churn according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. After churning, place in freezer to firm up. I recommend placing a seal of plastic wrap tight against the ice cream after making it to prevent a skin from forming on the ice cream’s surface. Serve once firm enough.

While Peabody's variation for serving this ice cream, in a cream soda float, sounded amazing, I made mine a bit more grown up and served it on slices of grilled lemon yogurt cake instead. It made a lovely dessert, simple and elegant, out of what was basically cake and ice cream. Cause you can't have a birthday without cake and ice cream, can you?

Happy Birthday Peabody! I hope 37 is everything you hoped it would be!