ORANGE POWER

Pumpkin reminds many people Halloween. Greek cuisine doesn’t include pumpkins widely, apart from the pumpkin pies whose receipts are quite regional. The recipe that follows is a creamy, smooth sweet dessert with pumpkin, carrot and orange. You can enjoy it on its own or combine it with biscuits, chocolate syrup or whipped cream! Really tasty, really orange!

Ingredients

 2 servings

• 200 gr. Pumpkin
• 1 carrot
• 2 zested and juiced oranges
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• Vanilla extract (optionally)
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoon caster powder
• 1 teaspoon butter

Steps

1. Chop the pumpkin at cubes.
2. Peel the carrot.
3. Boil the pumpkin and the carrot in a saucepan till they soften.
4. Drain them and put them in a food processor or electric chopper.
5. Preheat the half milk at low-medium temperature.
6. Add the melted pumpkin, the carrot and the butter.
7. Add the vanilla and the orange zest.
8. In a bowl combine well the sunflower powder and the other half of milk till the powder dissolved.
9. Add it to the boiling cream.
10. Add the orange juice.
11. Stir frequently.
12. Your cream is ready to serve it when it thickens.

 The smell will truly amaze you! So fresh and lovely!

BACK IN TIME

In an effort to clean my house, a photo caught my attention. It was an image of a little girl who laughs and holds an ice cream. I have changed so much since then. The photo was taken at my fifth birthday party!  My mom used to make little ice creams (that look like sandwiches) that everybody loved. The scent of vanilla drove me crazy. We never sat down to eat them,we just ran around holding an ice cream; the melted ice cream dripped onto our clothes and the carpets of the house made my mom mad.... Nonetheless she always cooked them again every time I asked her (with my help of course). In nostalgic mood I called her to give me the recipe which I post. I would like to mention that although I usually change the recipes she tells me, this time I followed it step by step. The process was really easy and I didn’t have to use an ice cream maker. It was so yummy! I have to admit that a little friend of mine was much more excited than I was... I guess this recipe was written for children... there is no other explanation I can give!

Ingredients

Some biscuits with rectangular shape

400gr sweetened condensed milk

400gr evaporated full fat milk

1 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons sugar

Steps

Chill the heavy cream in the fridge for about one hour before use and the evaporated milk in the freezer for about half an hour. In a large bowl, beat the heavy cream, the vanilla extract and the sugar with mixer for about 10 minutes. Pour in the bowl the sweetened milk and beat with the mixer on high speed for 5 minutes more. Remove the evaporated milk from the freezer and add to the bowl, beat with the mixer on high speed for 10 minutes. Pour this mixture into a metal bowl; place it to the freezer for about half an hour. Take the bowl out of the freezer and beat the ice cream until it’s creamy once again. Repeat the previous step twice. Do this again so that you have beaten the mixture a total of 3 times while freezing in meantime. Put the ice cream back into the freezer until it’s quite soft but not too hard to handle. Take one biscuit and spoon ice cream over top of the biscuit, use the back of a spoon to press evenly. Place over the ice cream another biscuit and refreeze until set.

Tips

• To succeed without ice cream to harden and without making crystals, it is very important to beat the cream very well.
• In case you want to avoid all this process of beating and freezing so many times you can use an ice cream maker.