Milk Street BAKES(Amazon affiliate link) This is a fabulous baking book! And in Milk Street tradition, it’s filled with recipes that aren’t going to be in the average baking book. So many delicious and unexpected bakes! This is a really fun book to play in. It will be loved by the amateur and the experienced baker alike. It’s a huge volume and the cover design is just gorgeous.
I’ll tell you all about the bakes we tried, but let’s get you that Almond-Coconut Cake with Cherries and Pistachios recipe first! Love love love this cake. Every bite is filled with big pops of flavor. My daughter laughed and said this is what people want fruit cake to taste like. Moist, dense, and rich, and filled with cherries, coconut, and pistachios. Strongly flavored and not a bit sweeter than it needs to be. Go make it. Hug me later!
Some people pick up my high-protein ice cream books because Jen’s protein nice creams are stupid delicious? Some love them because they’re flippin lickable but way healthier than traditional ice cream! And some smile that it tastes like that, but they’re loving the macros. Macros included. What does that mean?
My goals are high-flavor ice creams that are high-protein, high-produce where it works, and low-fat!
I got every ice cream shop classic out there in the first two books. So what’s in book 3? Book 3 is the foodie edition. I created wonderful flavors that aren’t in ice cream shops, but I think you’ll agree that they should be! Absolutely silly to fabulously gourmet. Total kitchen flex, but in terms of creativity, not necessarily any harder. There’s one 3 ingredient wonder in here that will refresh you on the hottest days! And when I asked friends if I missed any flavors in the first two books, they talked about mix-ins, so I’ve perfected three fabulous bases to empower you to fill with whatever delights you!
Jen’s Protein Nice Creams. 30 flavors in each book – a whole ice cream shop in 40 pages! (I went a little past that this time…*) It’s all stripped-down content with no fluff. Hard for a blogger to shut up, but I very intentionally did, so they’re sized like fat comic books rather than hefty texts. Hope you love them, too!
A few friends messaged that a specific milk and cottage cheese don’t work for their bodies, so I give alternatives on page 6 of each book, how to swap in tofu to convert the recipes to to-fruities**! The macros are really close, but I give the adjustments to the numbers there, too.
I include the macros by ingredient for each flavor so you can swap out for allergies / preferences / favorites… The nutrition facts (protein grams, fat grams, carb grams, and calories) come directly off the nutrition labels where available or MyFitnessPal for things without labels like fruit. I am a massive flavorist! No puddings and no gums! They taste like pudding and I want my ice creams to taste like delicious decadent ice cream!
Love, your foodie friend
*Amazon gave me the same cup of coffee for print books 1&2, and ebook 1. This is a little bigger, so the price is a few dollars higher, but I’m actually getting a slightly smaller coffee. Didn’t want anyone to think I was taking advantage of your love and support!*
**There is one flavor that I don’t think is going to work with the tofu swap. Cracker Jaqueline. *IF* you stubbornly go for it, please message me and let me know what you thought!**
I have the Ninja Creami Deluxe 11-in-1. The containers hold 24 oz and it has the most settings. All of my recipes are made for these 24 ounce containers. Those 24 oz containers are perfect for the hub and I to split. This machine is amazing!
Ninja Creami DeluxeNinja Creami 7-in-1
The Ninja Creami 7-in-1 is also highly rated. It has a few fewer functions and the containers are 16 oz. If you’re going this route, just make 2/3 of each of my recipes and modify the nutritional info to 2/3!
An immersion (stick) blender.
Cuisinart Smart Stick Blender. This fits right into the container, so you can mix your base without having any extra dishes. It makes it all streamlined. You could do it in a food processor, but that’s a lot of cleaning after each flavor. The immersion blender makes it so easy and tidy that you’ll use it all the time! (And not ice cream related, but combining a stick blender and a mason jar, sauces and dips are a breeze!)
Extra containers!
The Ninja Creami Deluxe comes with 2 containers. After you blend your base, you have to stick it in the freezer for 24 hours before it goes in the Creami. I bought two extra sets of 4 containers so that I’d have a total of 10 to work with. I personally went with generic. They are cheap and work just as well! BE SURE TO GET THE RIGHT CONTAINERS FOR YOUR MACHINE!!!! THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE!
10 Silicone Mug Cup Covers. Huh???? Yeah. Things expand when they freeze. The top of your concoction is perfectly level when you put it in your freezer. You pull it out and some weird frozen sculpture is trying to emerge from the surface. We don’t want to break our Creami blade! What to do? Some people put their mixtures in the freezer with the lids off until they freeze. Others shave down the icy protrusion. I just pop a wine glass cover right on the mixture’s surface and pop my lid on. Solved!
Protein powders
The first two are the main two I use for everything! (I’m putting links for the 2 lb containers, but the 5 lb are more economical!) The next three are fabulous, one recipe powders to add to your collection after the main two!
The first two are my main. I just use the confectioner’s version for red velvet, but you could totally use plain. Absolutely sub in whatever your favorite sweetener is!
Sometimes, even with 1 ½ to 2 cups of fabulous fruit in the concoctions, the flavor just wants a little boost to push it from yummy to fabulous! I love extracts.
My copies are finally here!!! 30 flavors in each book – a whole ice cream shop in 40 pages! It’s all stripped-down content with no fluff. Hard for a blogger to shut up, but I very intentionally did, so they’re sized like fat comic books rather than hefty texts. Hope you love them, too!
My daughter kept putting on and taking off a Ninja Creami from her wish list. I had to see what the fuss was about. I kept seeing post after post of what looked like the stuff gym-lovers’ dreams were made of, protein shakes in ice cream form. I didn’t have a Ninja Creami, but I did have a killer ice cream maker. Yeah, I make some amazing gelato and ice cream.
I pulled out my ice cream maker and tried a few recipes I found. Intriguing, but not great. My ice cream maker is the absolute best for gorgeously fatty concoctions, but an uneven hot mess for much lower fat and higher protein formulas. The mixtures would freeze hard like cement at the very outer edges and then it would want to stop turning to finish the center. I was having a hard time scraping it out of there and making a ridiculous mess of myself and the kitchen.
And the recipes I was finding weren’t thrilling me. Pudding’s great, but I don’t want my ice cream to taste like pudding. I want it to taste like ice cream!
One post just isn’t going to do it! The Best Damn Paleo Brownies. I am embarrassed to say that after flipping through the book flagging recipes to try, I stumbled on this little gem, and made it first. LOL! Totally worth it! Because there’s no flour, there’s nothing dulling the flavor of the chocolate. These are intensely chocolately. The flavor and texture are terrific. These are my new favorite brownies! These are not just my favorite paleo brownies, they are my favorite brownies!
We thought 2020 could use a little extra Christmas, so on November 1st, Halloween came down and Christmas went up! We loaded Alexa with a fabulous Christmas playlist, and started watching all our favorite shows. With about a week to go, it was time to make cookies. We have traditional ones for sure, but I love doing family requests. They asked for pecan dreams, gingersnaps, and 7 layer bars. I have favorites for pecan dreams and 7 layer bars, but I didn’t have go-to gingersnap cookies. I decided to consult my very favorite cookie book, Dorie Greenspan’s Dorie’s Cookies. Sure enough, there was a gingersnap recipe in there and it had a triple-threat of ginger in it: fresh, crystalized, and powdered. Ooooo! Best gingersnap ever. Gobs of flavor and that perfect crispness.
She gives a dough chilling range of 2 hours to overnight, and a baking range from 14-19 minutes, depending on where you want to be on the scale from chewy to crisp. I made them once, chilling for 2 hours and once, chilling overnight, and the full spectrum of baking times. If you prefer them to really spread and get crisp, 2 hours chilling and 18 minutes baking hit that. If you prefer a little less spreading and a chewy crisp balance, chilling overnight and 17 minutes baking produced that.
