Friday Foodie ~ Fun Fall Favorites

After reading the title of this post you may be thinking, "Chili and cornbread?  Soup?  Turkey and dressing?  Pumpkin muffins?"  You would be wrong with all those guesses!  My most recent Fall favorite flavors are in the form of ice cream.   It was in the upper 90s last week, so ice cream was exactly what I wanted.

 

I'm kind of obsessed with making a gallon of vanilla ice cream, then dividing it up in four quarts with four unique flavors.  This time I made Caramel Apple, Chocolate-Hot Tamale, Pumpkin, and Snickerdoodle.

I made a few changes this time and I think it turned out better than ever.  I started with my Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream recipe.  Once the ice cream finished churning, I divided it into my four quart size containers.  Instead of adding my flavors, I put the quarts in the freezer for about an hour.  I then pulled one quart out at a time and poured the ice cream into a larger bowl for mixing.  This allowed the ice cream to firm up a little more so when I added in the additional flavors they would not sink to the bottom of the container.  This worked like a charm!  Now on to the flavors...

Caramel Apple

1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and chopped 

1/2 cup Kraft  Caramel Bits

 

This was close to what I wanted.  The apple pieces were tart but the caramel bits got a little too hard after freezing.  I think I could have got the same flavor by adding caramel syrup instead.  Still, it was really good.  I'd say a 7 out of 10.

 

 

 

Chocolate-Hot Tamale

1/2 cup Hot Tamales, chopped

1/2 piece chocolate cake, chopped.

Last year Baskin Robbins carried a flavor called "Spicy 'n Spooky."  This was White Chocolate Ghost Pepper flavored Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Ice Cream and spicy Blood Orange Flakes and had quite the kick!  I tried to come up with something similar.  The Hot Tamales froze too hard like the caramel bits, but the flavor was good.  I'd call this a 6.5 out of 10.

 

Pumpkin

1 dozen Pumpkin Spice cookies, crushed.

The pumpkin spice cookie mix said that it would make 15 cookies.  They would have been very large cookies.  I made normal size cookies.  My first pan had a dozen and my second pan was a little larger and I was able to get another 20 cookies.  I cooked the pan that I wanted to use in my ice cream longer than normal, I wanted the cookies crunchy instead of soft and chewy like I usually make. This one was exactly what I was looking for!  Definitely a 10 out of 10.   

 

 

Snickerdoodle

Approximately 1/2 tube of sugar cookie dough

1/2 cup cinnamon/sugar mix

I bought a tube of "safe to eat raw" cookie dough.  I have been eating raw cookie dough for over 50 years so I'm sure I could have made this with "not safe to eat raw" dough, too.  I made small balls with the dough, then put them in the freezer until I was ready to add to the ice cream.  I mixed it with the cinnamon/sugar and dumped it all in the ice cream so there was a taste of cinnamon throughout.  This was another winner!  10 out of 10.

In case you're wondering, I plan to do some Christmas baking this year, but I'm pretty sure there will be a batch of Christmas ice cream, too!

McBroken

With the continuing saga of COVID-19 and just a little over a week until the election, it's rare to find a news article that brings a smile. But this one definitely caught my attention:

Engineer makes website to check on status of McDonald's ice cream machines

 

Les has an engineering degree, so does his brother Lance.  Their dad taught engineering.  So click bait or not, I clicked on the link.  Here's what I found out:

Twenty-four-year-old German software engineer Rashiq Zahid created McBroken, a website that checks every McDonald's location in the US to see if they have a working ice cream machine using a bot.

According to The Verge, Zahid was inspired to build the bot after a trip to a Berlin McDonald's. He attempted to order a McSundae from both the touchscreen kiosk and the mobile app to no avail.

I love how Rashiq did his research, "Zahid first tested his bot by focusing on German locations of the fast food franchise and biked to every location in Berlin to manually order McSundaes to check if his bot was correct. Once he discovered that the bot was correct with the Berlin locations, he expanded it to US McDonalds."

That's what I call a good use of time!  How many times have you gone to the McDonald's drive thru only to be told the ice cream machine wasn't working?  Les and I use to enjoy grabbing a cone on the way home from church from time to time, but that turned in to a frustrating experience. 

I went to McBroken.com and the site is fully functional.  One of the four McDonald's in our town currently has a broken machine.  We may not be able to enjoy mask free lives, our mailboxes are overflowing with election propaganda, but at least now we can order ice cream with confidence!

Saturday Morning Photo Dump

I haven't even started working on my Woman of the Week!  I've spent a lot of time on my feet, out and about in Honolulu this week and very little time in front of the laptop.  I will finish this series before the end of the year, hopefully before Christmas, but I WILL finish it!

Here are some of the sites I've been enjoying.  We bring a little bit of luggage...

Our traditional first morning breakfast at Cinnamon's.  They had gingerbread pancakes but our server didn't tell us!

Serving Love and Aloha since 1985...

The Bus decked out for Christmas!

The Honolulu Marathon is tomorrow.  I won't be running it, but I visited the expo anyway!

I spotted these elite runners from my room yesterday morning:

Friday night the sailboats head out for a sunset cruise...

While we head to Round Table Pizza and Lappert's Ice Cream...

Lots of boats in the Ala Wai Harbor are decked out for Christmas...

We were back in our room by 7:45 to watch the fireworks.  Love the reflection on the water!

I was up early for a run this morning.

I never get tired of the view of Diamond Head...

While I working on this post, I received a text from Les who is out on a bike ride.  "Caught in Waimanalo parade again."

Hope you're having a wonderful week!  Christmas is almost here and I haven't bought a single gift or sent a single card!

All You Need is Love... and a Little Ice Cream

We're on our final week for this Hawaiian trip.  We've had a wonderful time.  Les has been super busy working and getting in some fun bike rides.  I've continued training for my next marathon.  Four weeks from Saturday I'll be lining up again.  In addition to my normal training runs I was able to participate in the Brio Ice Cream 25k yesterday morning.  It started at 5:30 a.m.  Since New Life Pentecostal only has a Sunday evening service it did not impact our church attendance at all.  We were so happy to see Pastor McGriffin feeling better, preaching and encouraging us all.

It was a breezy 76 degrees for the race, which meant my body was working overtime to run and keep from overheating.  I haven't done many races but this one felt pretty good!  I finished 16/34 in my age group (Females 50-54) and I was happy with that.

And ice cream at the end?  Can't go wrong there!

I apologize for my lack of posts.  I don't have a comfortable spot to type on my laptop in this particular condo and any extended time ends up really hurting my wrist.