Wednesday, May 25, 2016

What is "double dutch" ice cream?


Images from Selecta Facebook page

As a chocolate lover, I've always preferred Rocky Road over Double Dutch even when I was a kid. Double dutch was just vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup ripple and chocolate bits as far as I was concerned.

Now, I'm more willing to go for non-chocolate flavors and during the rare times I buy ice cream I usually want to try new-to-me flavors.

Recently, a friend bought a tub of Selecta double dutch ice cream and I was surprised to see it had marshmallows and peanuts, those add-ins I associate with rocky road. Has double dutch always had these and I just never noticed?

I tried searching for what makes a flavor "double dutch" and found only one website referring to heavily dutched cocoa/chocolate and a PDF or nutrition info for double dutch ice cream that seemed to be merely a richer chocolate flavor. The rest were Filipino pages or Asian at most (Walls in Vietnam or Singapore). Rocky road, meanwhile, has a documented history.

Does anyone remember if double dutch always had marshmallows and nuts or is my memory failing me?

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Flour Tortillas (no leaven)

I had some AP flour I didn't know what to do with and it suddenly occurred to me to try making my own tortillas. I made these without any leavening and more or less followed this recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup AP flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup warm water

Procedure:

Mix flour and salt in bowl.
Add oil and stir until well combined.
Add warm water 1 tablespoon at a time until the mixture starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
Knead dough on floured board for about 3 minutes.
Allow dough to rest for 15 minutes.
Roll dough into sausage-shape and then cut into 6 equal parts.
With a glass bottle, roll each little ball into a tortilla. I couldn't make it round!
Heat a skillet over medium heat. Toast the tortillas in a dry pan for about 30 seconds on each side for soft tortillas or longer for crisp tortillas.

Here are the ugly finished products.

I don't think they're supposed to look like this but they tasted fine despite looking uncooked in parts.

Next time I'll use baking powder so they're fluffier and maybe more like pitas than flour tortillas.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Yoghurt House, Sagada, Mt. Province

I had a late breakfast and wanted the cheapest item I could get from Yoghurt House so I decided to get the Fruits in Season Yoghurt Favorites which had bananas, strawberries, mangoes, apples(!). As you can see, the strawberries were rather unripe so they were sour. Good thing lacatan bananas are always sweet.


At Php160.00, it's something I can easily put together at home although their yogurt [I prefer this simpler spelling] is strained which is something I only do if I'm making yogurt dip to bring to a party. I prefer my yogurt with short fermentation period so it's sweet and only the slightest bit tangy.

It may not be obvious from the photo but it's a pretty big bowl, maybe a pint in size, so I was satisfied.