Challenging Arts & Crafts: July 2013

My Home Made Raspberry-Mascarpone Ice Cream

Raspberry Mascarpone Ice Cream

We´ve been having temps around 35°C (95 F) lately and it´s so humid, very humid!

So I tried out an ice cream recipe that adds Mascarpone cheese to the Raspberries to have some chilling reserves in the freezer.

If you do not have an ice cream maker, no worries! You only need to freeze your mixture and with occasional stirring you´ll have your delicious ice cream to enjoy.

Ingredients:
3 egg yolks
4 tbsp Stevia powder ( sugar Substitute) instead of 60 grams sugar

1 tbsp Vanilla Aroma or 1 pack Vanilla Sugar

200 grams Rama Creme fein ( I used the less 50% fat cream)

or if you like it more creamy, use 200 grams double cream

200 ml milk or semi skimmed milk
200 grams Mascarpone cheese - light ( choose one with lesser fat )
1 Cup Raspberry yogurt
1 Cup frozen raspberry

How to prepare:

1. In a container, whisk egg yolks and add 2 tbsp of stevia powder, whisk til the

     mixture becomes pale yellow in color, set aside .

2. For the Custard:

   In a separate container, whip the cream, add 2 tbsp of Stevia powder,

add the 200 ml semi skimmed milk and the Mascarpone cheese, add the yogurt.



   Add the egg mixture from step 1. Add the Raspberries, blend thoroughly.

   If necessary, adjust the sweetness according to your taste...

3. Transfer the ready mixture into a sturdy container and place it in the

    freezer , stirring the mixture occasionally like every half an hour to

   prevent crystal formations.

  When the consistency of the mixture is achieved and the ice cream is good

enough to be  scooped , then the ice cream is ready.

If you are using an ice cream maker, refrigerated the ready mixture for at least 4 hours before preocessing this in the machine.



* * * * * * * * * * * *

Ice Cream maker:

If you are using an ice cream maker, you would have to freeze its base container for at least 24 hours. Prepare the top lid and the rotary part of the machine before putting on the power. Let the rotating part run before processing of the mixture begins.

Carefully add the mixture using a tablespoon pouring it into the open Slot. Never stop the machine during the processing as the mixture will be frozen...

Let the machine run between 15-40 minutes until the ice cream is ready. And if the mixture is still soft, place it in the freezer for a while until it reached the right consistency.

Enjoy your ice cream and have a nice chillin day!

Hope your week-end is fine! Thank you for reading this blog.

Til Next!!!

A Viennese Flower Field

Every year in summer, it is a joy to see this place especially when these gladiolas ( gladiolus ) begin to bloom.

This field is just a few steps away from my home, which is actually open for public. It´s a self service cut-your choice flower field.

You bring your cutter , choose the flowers and pay for what you cut.

There ´s no cashier around, no fence, no security control, no cameras. You have to give your coins to the slot of the cash box provided.

Last weekend, I cut a few gladiolas to decorate my home.

The flowers are that heavy and sometimes, it´s kind of difficult to make an Arrangement to fix it in a vase that has a wide mouth.. I had to add a few stems from the potted lilies to make the blooms stand out facing the front of the vase.

Gladiolas are very popular here, especially if the colors vary in making floral arrangements.... and the cut ones last for so many days.

You only have to change the water in the vase everyday.

The bulbs planted here are the fusion of all colors,... vivid colors you can possibly think about... you can make a cluster of just one color or you may mix them in your decoration and still they would look gorgeous.

Hope you´ve enjoyed this posting and thanks for being here.

Happy Sunday to all of you, wherever you are in this part of the world!

Til next,

Mercy

Parsley , Squash, Salad Green & others

We´re truly blessed with sunny days the last 2 weeks and that´s good for my potted garden... The newbies are getting bigger day by day.

...and I can´t wait to make the first harvest of the parsley and the salad greens...

We´ll have to wait for the fruits of the bell peppers as their early beginnings in the pot weren´t that good due to cold weather last mid June.

But, they´re now showing lots of flowers and I already noticed a pepper popping out the last couple of days.

I never miss using empty cracker containers for the salad greens and I´m getting more of empty ones once a month..

I actually started using three of these to give color to my terrace, but then, they seemed to have grown in numbers as we emptied cans of Skyflakes Crackers imported from the Philippines.

I´ll start to harvest my salad greens later today, I´m sure they´ll be crispy and delicious.

The chinese cabbage called pechay (paksoi) grew so fast.. Its Images are still lingering on my mind when their seeds were sowed a couple of weeks ago for the first time..

Right now, I´m facing a problem with the salad greens, insects( larvae) are enjoying them and six plants, leaves of which have been eaten up and the plant got devastated...hhhhmm!

The Squash climbed up so fast in the trellis I temporarily made for the purpose. Only thing is , I´m supposed to let its vine grow on the floor. Now, I´m vertically growing it for lack of space and am not sure how the giant fruit would hang from the top vine..

I had to put a "bandage" ( masking tape) to straighten up the damage Squash vine..

The two potted bell peppers below love intensive sunshine and they feel great when watered at the end of the day when I come home from work.

I´ll give an update about the first harvest of the greens in the next days.

Meanwhile, do enjoy your time as weekend slowly aproaches!

Thank you for taking time to read this blog.....

Xo Xo,

Mercy

A Saturday Flea Market Spree & The Loot

The biggest Brocante that I ever went to was in St. Ouen,.Paris, It was full of so many beautiful things that are absolutely adorable, from vintage to new, you name it... We also have a flea market in Vienna and that´s what I´like to blog about,... we went there last weekend.

The weather prediction had not been good, said to myself rain or shine I would go... It was actually hubby´s idea to go early, I was surprised ´cause he would only go when the market is almost closing... that´s when you get the items you like offered in cheaper prices because the dealers don´t want to bring home their unsold items.

We weren´t really looking for particular pieces, just things that fancy us .

Vienna´s fleamarket is not that big, well, this is a small city... and so is its flea market.

The two ceramic serving trays are new and unused and cost

0.50 Euro cents each.

The choices are wide... but sometimes you can´t avoid to encounter trash.

He is a flea market dealer tending the stall with his 2 pugs sleeping on his lap, the pugs were so cute, simply sleeping and wanting to overcome the heat.

...various mineral beads, I used to buy my beads here but the dealer´s prices became expensive since the last years.

I´m always on the look out for flower aquarelles, blue & white ceramics as well as potteries to add to my collection.

Two delft ceramic shoes, souvenirs from Holland... I brought one when we visited Amsterdam a few years back.. some are ashtrays and some are for wall hanging.

A nice tea cup & saucer set as lucky find in exchange for 2 Euros...

This is aso a lucky find, a crocheted pillowcase that is so crisp and still looking so new...

brass sconce

View of the Wien Fluss in Stadtpark , a small creek that connects to the Danube River with the Vienna Hilton as backgound...this is the underground train station U4 that connects you to the Saturday flea market.

The loot have been ok and I think I´ll enjoy all what we got.

Well, that´s all about for now, I hope your having a nice Friday. Thanks for reading me today.

TGIF!!!

Til next,

Mercy

Container Gardening

This is our sundeck and I´ve converted it into my pot garden a couple of years back. You must have read about container gardening becoming popular nowadays. Well, I´m also into this and have been planting ever since salad greens, aubergines (eggplants), sweet Paprikas (bell peppers) to name a few..

Year by year, our SUMMER has really become unpredictable... as of this writing, we´re experiencing small showers right now in Vienna.

As I said before, this terrace is protected by three walls and it´s very very hot in summer, so it´s very ideal to grow vegetables. Unlike in the backyard, there are no slugs that destroy the plants..

This year, I sowed my own chinese cabbage seeds from last year´s harvest.. I´m telling you, it´s fun to see how the seeds develop into plants so fast.

This is one of two bell peppers I´m growing this season... I normally sow the seeds myself, but we came back from holiday so late in June. I got them from the garden center when it was still small.

I also got salad green newbies. These lettuce here are already 10 days old and they´ve grown a bit bigger now as it becomes warmer each day.

The celery here came from my kitchen, I can´t believe that they would still grow once the stalks were cut. I simply replanted this in a pot and soon new stalks and leaves began sprouting... Someone told me that it should grow infinitely...uhhhhhm, let´s wait & see.

Year in year out, parsley is one plant I never miss in container gardening, and I also sowed seeds this year. Hopefully, I´m going to have plenty of harvest too! :-)

This is an exciting experiment... my old potatoes got plenty of slips and I cut and put each in 4 cracker containers... and now as you see, it´s growin... growin... growing!!!

Let´s wait and see if the replanting of the potatoes a success. It will be...... when the fruits are there to get harvested, so please keep your fingers crossed!!!

Parsley, I got the newbies from the garden center ans am still waiting for the sowed seeds to come out.

Giant Squash.... I got two of them and I hope that I wouldn´t run out of space because the sundeck is really really that small. I made the raised bed out of 4 concrete hollow blocks... Last year, I planted Bitter Melon or ampalaya and it was truly a success...

Challenging Arts & Crafts