Did I hear you say who is Ina Garten?
Well, I will forgive you, this time, for not knowing one of the most talented and celebrated TV cooks and recipe book authors in America.
One time White House nuclear policy analyst, one time food store owner, these days she is a charming TV personality who presents a cooking show ‘Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics’ on Food Network from Monday through Friday at 12:30 p.m., 4:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., Saturday at 11:00 a.m., and Sunday at 8:30 a.m. (all times ET.)
You can’t help but be carried along by her easy way of presenting, and showing you how to make dishes that blow your mind both visually and aesthetically, so much so that you practically drool while she prepares them. Sadly, for us anyway, she only has close family and friends on her show.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, she has authored a number of best-selling cook books, available on Amazon. She is an advocate of using fresh ingredients usually vegetables picked from her home garden. These give her food extremely rich flavors and just look totally awesome!
She is known for her many scrumptious desserts where she isn’t afraid to mix and match different flavors. From the consistently high ratings her show gets, I’m sure they always turn out DELICIOUS.
As a presenter of a cooking show, she uses a pretty wide range of kitchen gadgets. We are interested in the ice cream makers she uses to create sorbets, yoghurts and other frozen treats.
She usually has to feed between 3 and 5 people at each meal, hence she would use an ice cream maker that makes at least 1 full quart of dessert.
She has used many of these gizmos over the years from the Krups Expert ice cream maker, the Kitchen Aid stand mixer with the ice cream stand attachment . These days though, she is using a gadget that anyone can buy – she prepares a delicious, visually stunning ice cream Bombe with the Cuisinart ICE-21 Ice Cream Maker in the video below.
The Cuisinart is a multi use, versatile workhorse. I will quickly walk you through some of its important features:
Size / Capacity – This appliance makes 1 – 1½ quarts of ice cream, gelato or sorbet. That’s enough to feed 4 people.
Style and Décor – Being available in red, turquoise, blue, white and other colours, allows the Cuisinart to match your existing décor. The dimensions of 10.8 x 10.8 x 15.8 make it fit unobstrusively on most countertops.
Easy-lock transparent lid – Experimenting has never been so much fun, as with the transparent, open lid that this gadget comes with, you can pop in any ingredients, nuts, fruits that catch your fancy; even while the machine is churning.
Heavy duty motor – The 50 Watt motor in this gizmo whips up yummy desserts in mere minutes.
Double insulated freezer bowl – A unique design where the mixing bowl is frozen for about 20hours before hand (I simply leave mine in the freezer between ice cream batches). Once you pick up the bowl and can’t hear any liquid sloshing about inside it, its frozen enough. Pre-freezing the bowl ensures that the proper temperature is reached to prepare your frozen dessert, and the double insulation keeps it cold for longer.
Multiple desserts – Sorbets? Frozen yogurt? Vanilla ice cream? Chocolate ice cream? Gelato? All these and so much more can be made using the Cuisinart ICE 21. Simply follow the recipes included with the ice cream maker.
The Cuisinart ice cream machine used by Ina Garten, from the Barefoot Contessa is a readily available model that you can buy here, from Amazon. Couple this with a few of her cookbooks and you are on your way to wow-ing your family and friends with the desserts you come up with.
Photo Credit: ice cream bombe
