Well, it's still technically the 27th, so I'm going to put this in the "on time" column. Last month I got to test two new ice creams, but I still had so many bookmarked to try, how could I choose? I narrowed it down to four, and decided I'd do mini baked Alaskas to showcase the ice creams. And I put them in chocolate shells. Why not, right? This was made possible by my new wonderfully awesome blow torch.

Aren't they cute? I love how they turned out. Too bad my pictures of the insides didn't really work. Here's a collage just to show that I did four different kinds:

Clockwise from bottom left are chocolate cherry, pistachio, Mexican hot chocolate, and buttered popcorn with caramel* All of the ice creams are delicious, and the pound cake is yummy (although it was soooo dry and crumbly, but that's probably just me). The buttered popcorn ice cream is a brain trip. It maintains the flavor of the popcorn so well that it feels like you should be eating popcorn. Everyone loves it, and I will definitely be making it again. I feel like I could make ice cream in my sleep at this point.

I loved this challenge. Making all the ice creams was so fun, and it's great to visualize something in your head and be able to totally make it happen. I love these mini baked Alaskas. We have a ton of ice cream leftover, but that's okay. I go a huge box of ice cream cones, and we're going to have an ice cream party. More fun!

*Note about the caramel for anyone who may care. I tried time after time to make caramel starting from dry sugar. Every time I failed. EVERY SINGLE TIME. It was demoralizing. I'm not used to failing so utterly and completely in the kitchen. So since the last time I tried I got a Le Creuset saucepan, so I decided to give it one more shot. And guess what y'all? It worked! Like a charm. Perfect, delicious caramel. And that's all I have to say about that. Caramel conquered, finally.