Wearing white and eating ice cream after Labour Day

Labour day may have signalled the changing of the seasons, but I still plan to wear white and I definitely plan to keep making ice cream for the time being.

Since the farmer's markets have so much great produce right now, I'm trying to take advantage of what's available, even for an ice cream flavour. So at the Somerville Farmer's Market (Union Square) on Saturday of the Labour Day weekend, I procured two large bunches of mint to make David Lebovitz's mint chocolate chip ice cream.

I noticed an interesting discrepancy in his recipes - for the piece he did for Fine Cooking magazine last year, he used 1 cup of mint leaves, but a recipe on his website called for 2 cups of packed mint leaves. That made me wonder whether the ginger ice cream recipe from Fine Cooking magazine wouldn't have been gingery enough for our palates because I would need to at least double the amount of ginger called for in the recipe. I'll have to give that a try the next time I circle back to ginger. In any case, the recipe on his website suggested 2 packed cups of mint leaves, so that's what I did.

People, 2 packed cups of mint is a LOT of mint. Cramming two cups of mint into two cups of liquid (one cup whole milk, one cup cream) to steep was a little challenging, but boy was it worth it - when we open the container of ice cream, we're bathed in a waft of mint. It's minty alright, but without the flaming green colour of commercial ice creams. So I've learned my lesson - pack as much flavour into the ice cream base to the point where it's almost two much, and then it'll be perfect. That or else our taste buds are dying - which in that case, don't listen to anything I have to say about flavour because it may blow your head off.