Most Oktoberfest menus are pretty predictable — oceans of beer, mountains of sausage, sauerkraut, and maybe freshly baked pretzels.

Santa Cruz, though, takes pride in leaning off-center.  The music at Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery’s fifth annual Sausagefest last weekend was country.  Frauleins sported elaborate tattoos with their flirty barmaid drindls.  And the popular Penny Ice Creamery served beer ice cream.

There weren’t a lot of takers  for the Devout Stout-flavored ice cream early in the evening, but I couldn’t resist.  A scoop in a pint jar with a little of the same beer was the best thing I had all night.  It was thick, creamy and lightly sweet with flavors of coffee, caramel and a pleasantly bitter hint of burnt sugar.  Even before I left, I knew I was going to have to try to make it at home.

It turns out that beer ice cream isn’t that rare.  Mentions can be found all over the Internet.  Most of the recipes don’t sound very appealing, however.  Some don’t bother to cook the eggs.  Others add molasses or chocolate to round out the beer flavors.

I decided to riff off a basic French-style vanilla ice cream.  First, I reduced some good dark beer with a little brown sugar to make a syrup and cook off most of the alcohol.  Then I substituted the beer syrup for some of the cream in the formula.  It turned out even better than I hoped.

The secret to good beer ice cream, of course, is good beer.  A can of Bud just won’t do. But any well-crafted stout or porter is worth a try.

The artisan Devout Stout is a wonderful, dark and deeply flavored brew.  I would have used it if we could have found any in all the usual places.  When we didn’t, I turned to that reliable supermarket standby, Guiness Extra Stout, for the first batch.

It was very nice although a little rough around the edges.  If I hadn’t tasted the Devout Stout ice cream, I would have declared it a winner.

Still, I knew the ice cream could be better.  So I snagged some Black Butte Porter, my husband’s favorite, for the next try.  Smoother and more nuanced, it was just right.

The only thing better than this ice cream is a float made with the same beer.  Give it a try. You’ll be amazed.

The way this summer has gone, it looked like there never was going to be a good time to try out my idea for adult versions of the commercial (and trademarked) Popsicle.  But the weather seems to have settled into a nice run of warm days at last and I’ve been experimenting with making ice pops with a kick.

These frozen bars are milder versions of a couple of refreshing summer cocktails made with fresh juice.  It took a little tweaking to get the flavor right while reducing the alcohol enough that the pops would freeze.  They’re supposed to be fun, not seriously intoxicating, anyway.

For my models, I drew on Lynchburg Lemonade, named after the Kentucky home of the Jack Daniels distillery, and a generic peach daiquiri recipe.  I substituted lemon juice and homemade simple syrup for sour mix in the potent lemonade recipe and stuck to fresh peaches rather than “peach-flavored” liqueurs in the daiquiri.

The results are fresh tasting and fruity—with just enough liquor to make the flavors more interesting.

These are easy to whirl together in the blender and freeze in the ice pops molds readily available in most cookware stores these days.  Let them freeze overnight and you’re ready for an impromptu party, complete with frozen drinks.

I’d been looking for a great new use for cocoa ever since Valrhona sent me some of its products for review late this summer.  The bars of solid chocolate from France are my first choice for baking and I always try to pick up a couple while shopping at Trader Joe’s just to keep my pantry stocked. But I generally think of cocoa powder, no matter the label, as a pale substitute for the real thing, dry and dusty rather than rich and silky.

Then I tasted a fabulous chocolate sorbet from SCREAM Sorbet at the Wednesday farmers market and inspiration struck.  Melted chocolate alone wouldn’t deliver that intense taste.  I needed a dark and dusky cocoa with an intoxicating aroma for an extra layer of flavor.  What better use for that stash of Valrhona?

The recipe for this sorbet began, as most good frozen desserts seem to, with David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop.” The cookbook author and former Chez Panisse pastry chef, now living in Paris, is a wizard with an ice cream machine.  To make his basic chocolate sorbet recipe my own, I added a sparkling citrus note from grated orange rind and a little kick from a couple of tablespoons of Grand Marnier.  The results were stunning.   Without an ounce of milk or cream, it was as thick and satiny as chocolate mousse, with an intensity unmatched by most commercial products.

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Juicy, sweet, dribble-down-your-chin peaches are one of the real treats of summer.

Because there are dozens of varieties out there, each ripening at a different time, the season seems to stretch on forever.  By mid-July I’m usually ready to do something more with this delightful fruit than merely stand over the sink, eating it out of hand.  Still, I want to keep it simple to preserve the bright, sun-kissed taste.

Peaches and ice cream are a classic combo and this year I’m serving grilled peaches with a spicy, ginger ice cream.  Grilling caramelizes the surface of the fruit and concentrates the flavor.  Ginger serves as a dramatic counterpoint.  Pair the hot fruit with the chilly ice cream and you have an ideal dessert for these midsummer evenings when it’s really too hot to turn on an oven.

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The gray, rainy days of February bring at least one consolation, these beautiful, juicy blood oranges in the market. Citrus is extraordinarily plentiful this season — a friend’s Meyer lemon tree is in overdrive — but it ‘s blood oranges that captivate me.

Although their California season extends for several months in the dead of winter, we have to catch them when we can in our local supermarket. Their rind is thick and often marked with a burgundy blush. Slice them open and there’s no question how they got their name. At it’s best, the flesh is a deep red, glistening like a garnet.

On looks alone, these descendants of Sicilian orchards stand out in the market among the crates of navel, Valencia and mandarin citrus so abundant at this time of year. Yet it’s their sweet, tangy flavor, with undertones of young red wine, that brings me back.

Blood oranges are wonderful eaten straight out of hand, slowly peeling off the segments one at a time. They’re gorgeous in salads or garnishing a dessert and I just knew they would make a fabulous sorbet. (more…)