This week I made Sour Cream Pound Cake. It was made with non-fat sour cream, but still tasted good. My roommates ate almost all of it, so that’s a good sign that it looked as good as it tasted. Pretty basic recipe with items you generally have on hand.
I think the most challenging thing for me this month was finding time to complete it! Otherwise, the pound cake and ice cream were pretty simple. It is just a basic recipe for each. The only different (challenging) parts were browning the butter (since I’ve only done it a few times), and freezing the ice cream, since I do not have an ice cream machine (yet!).
Since I made the ice cream (custard) and just let it freeze over night (no stirring involved) and I took it out the next morning and paddled it on the electric mixer for a few minutes to aerate it and help to somewhat melt out the ice crystals that formed. This help make it look more like vanilla ice cream. Before it “churned” it was just yellow and the vanilla bean had all sunk to the bottom of the container. Literally, just frozen custard. After, it was white and the little “dots” of vanilla were disbursed throughout. It was more creamy, and less icy, but still not perfect. I think the smooth, non-icy texture can only be achieved with a real way of churning it while it freezes. Not bad though, for homemade ice cream without any sort of ice cream machine.
The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.
I made the petit fours (but did not make/use the chocolate glaze). I think they’re good just as they are!
I’m sorry for the lack of posting lately. But I have been baking. This post features dessert that I made for the dinner Benjie hosted on Saturday (I’m always there to help and semi co-host.) Anyway, I made vanilla souffles with chocolate sauce. Also, in case those didn’t work out, I made a brown butter pound cake.
The souffles turned out okay, and for those of you who were at the dinner, and didn’t get a chance to try the pound cake the next day, I am sorry you missed out, because that was also good. I promise I will make it for you some time! 
I had not made a souffle since my second year of pastry school, so I was tempted to try them, especially since I got the ramekins to make them in for my birthday. (Thanks, Mom!) I am so happy they turned out tasting okay, even if they were a little bit crooked (they didn’t rise straight).
The pound cake was a little bit dry, but I’ll admit to over baking them slightly, because I was distracted while they were in the oven, because I was watching Dexter, which, is a really addicting show. I almost went straight to watching it instead of posting this, but I figured you’ve waited long enough for a new post… 
Click on the link for the recipes and more pictures.
