New York State Upside-Down Ice Cream Cupcakes (for the 2011 Ice Cream Cupcake Contest)

I can honestly say I've been dreaming of entering a cooking contest since I was 10. I'd pour over every issue of the Lowell Ledger, our very local newspaper, and I'd imagine what recipe I'd make for the chili contest at the Kiwanis Club or the pie bake-off at the local fair. Last summer, I considered entering the Pie in the Park contest but never quite got around to it. The desire to enter a cooking contest never faded away.

This week, I finally took the cooking contest plunge (although in a slightly different, more virtual venue that 10-year-old me couldn't have imagined would be possible). I decided to participate in the 2011 Ice Cream Cupcake Contest created by Cupcake Project and Scoopalicious. The challenge: create a recipe for an ice cream cupcake (that combines cake and ice cream), photograph it and blog about it. I committed, but I just had to make my creation.

Then, the New York Times posted this recipe for rhubarb upside-down cake. The recipe has you create a quick brown sugar and butter sauce to spread in the bottom of the pan, add chopped rhubarb (uncooked) and top it with cake batter. The recipe promised a delightful layer of tender pink rhubarb atop a moist cake.

I created these New York State Upside-Down Ice Cream Cupcakes as a testament to this season's New York state produce. Rhubarb came into season first, and strawberries just joined it. After a winter of eating root vegetables and cellared apples, I was ready to celebrate! Ronnybrook Farm Dairy in the Hudson River Valley provided the dairy products I needed to make the complete project a success. 

I adapted the rhubarb upside-down cake into cupcakes that were loaded with rhubarb topping. I greased and re-greased the pans so the cupcakes wouldn't stick. Each cupcake was given a spoonful of brown sugar and butter, a full layer of rhubarb and then filled about 2/3 of the way full with batter.

As the cupcakes cooked, the brown sugar and butter mixture bubbled up a bit over the sides. The baking pan I placed underneath the cupcakes as they baked was a life saver and saved me from scrubbing burnt caramel off the bottom of my oven.

I still had a batch of roasted rhubarb ice cream, using some of the beautiful local rhubarb I picked up during a trip to the farmer's market. I sliced fresh strawberries and whipped up a quick batch of whipped cream.

Assembling the ice cream cupcakes was the fun part. There are countless ways you can assemble your cupcakes (Stef from Cupcake Project has a great list of options), but I decided to go with the slice-and-stuff idea. I sliced the cupcake in half, being careful to avoid the delicate rhubarb layer. I added a layer of strawberries, topped it with spoonfuls of rhubarb ice cream and put the top back on. A spoonful of whipped cream finished it off perfectly.

Pizza with Broccoli Raab and Roasted Onions

I get excited about any recipe that calls for just a pinch of red pepper flakes. Two years ago, Cooks Illustrated wrote an article remaking pasta alla norma. In the recipe, they wrote that "a small measure of red pepper flakes added a suggestion of heat."

That small pinch of red pepper flakes totally transformed the recipe. After each bite melted away, I was left with just the smallest suggestion of heat. I was hooked. So, when I read the ingredient list for Smitten Kitchen's pizza with broccoli raab and roasted onions, I was delighted to see a pinch of red pepper flakes added into the broccoli raab as it cooked. This tiny ingredient makes a huge difference. Do not leave it  out.

Although broccoli rabe just came into season here, I see why Deb from Smitten Kitchen made this recipe in January. It involves roasting onions for at least 30 minutes, and then letting your oven preheat to 500 degrees (!!!) for about an hour. It involves standing over the oven to slide your pizza in and take it out. Thankfully, it got down to the 70s tonight, and with a fan in the window the cooking experience was quite pleasant.

The recipe called for a chiffonade cut, which I had only heard mentioned before but had never actually attempted. Kitchen Daily had this great tutorial, which made the chiffonade cut feel more manageable. It involved making lots of adorable piles of broccoli rabe leaves and cutting them into careful, even-sized strips.

The grocery store only had olives with pits, so I used a handy trick Brooklyn Larder showed me a few months ago. I put the olive on a cutting board, placed the palm of my hand on it, and pressed down as hard as I could. When I removed my hand, the pit was exposed and easy to remove. The finished product is a little messy looking but still delicious.

The finished product was light and nutritious. This is my new go-to pizza recipe.

Roasted Rhubarb Vanilla Ice Cream

I came home from the farmers' market on Saturday with a beautiful bunch of fresh red rhubarb stalks and no strawberries. It's still so early in the strawberry season, and they were selling at the market this week for eight dollars a pint, so I resisted. In hindsight, that decision ended up being a hidden gift, because it forced me to move beyond strawberry-rhubarb pies, galettes, and crumbles to come up with a more creative recipe using rhubarb.

Roasted rhubarb puree

A quick phone call home to chat with my dad yielded this recipe for Savory Rhubarb Lentil Dal from Mark Bittman. Interesting idea, but the idea of the first rhubarb of the season just disintegrating into a dish just seemed disappointing. I wanted this rhubarb to pop!

That's when I stumbled across this delightful blog by Tom from Tall Clover Farm, where he posts about the fruit he grows and the pies he makes. He'll also give you advice about how to set up your own compost bin and he'll tell you where to find the cute new raincoats his dogs are sporting.

Most importantly, he taught me how to make my first cooked custard ice cream. I've been eyeing cooked custard ice cream recipes since I got The Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet  and Accompaniments and an ice cream maker for my birthday from my New Jersey relatives! I've made several of his Philadelphia ice cream recipes, which are uncooked, to great success, but I haven't attempted his multi-step custards.

Tom's recipe made it seem so easy, and it was! His step-by-step directions and gorgeous pictures drew me right in. What could be better than a vanilla custard ice cream with roasted rhubarb puree mixed in?

To determine whether the custard is fully cooked, run your finger down the spatula. If your finger leaves a path that is not quickly filled in by custard, it's ready!

This ice cream is full of flavor and so tasty. It was hard to balance scooping it into freezer containers and tasting! Now to figure out what to serve it with..... a post on that to come later!