Strawberry ice cream and angel food cake

I imagine that, for a jazz musician, there comes a point where you know enough about everything—your instrument, chord progressions, keys, melodies, harmonies, whatever else—that you're playing a piece of music and you are brimming with so much confidence and inspiration that you say: let me take it from here, I can handle this.

Sometimes I feel like that in the kitchen, like I understand the flavors, technique, ingredients so well that, even though I'm not quite sure where it's going, it'll be fine. And, most of the time, I am dead wrong. Most of the time, this kind of thinking presents me with a good opportunity to remember that recipes exist for a reason—namely, to tell me how to make excellent food. Not that the food that comes out of my experiments is inedible. It's just wholly mediocre and decidedly not-excellent. EXCEPT FOR THIS ICE CREAM.

Let me tell you what happened. I went to the grocery store last week to buy some cheap vodka and tequila for infusions. And strawberries were on an incredible special: 4 pounds for $4! I bought 8 pounds...this may have been a little ambitious. I knew I wanted to make a strawberry coulis to freeze in anticipation of my mother's birthday (next weekend!) and I knew I wanted to eat some strawberries, but 8 pounds, my friend, is many, many strawberries.

So, I decided to make some ice cream and I decided that, even though I've never made strawberry ice cream, that I wasn't happy with any of the recipes I could find. Because, you know, I've made other ice creams (beet, olive oil, tequila—not mixed together), so I kind of get it: you make a custard, you chill it, you put it in your ice cream maker. Easy peasy. Right? Surprisingly, yes.

Here's the fantastic thing: this ice cream recipe uses enough egg yolks to provide you with enough egg whites to make an angel food cake. It's as if chickens have been evolving to make jumbo-sized eggs with the perfect yolk/white ratio for precisely this situation.

Strawberry ice cream
3 cups whole milk, or any milk/cream combination you like
3 cups chopped strawberries (this will be divided: 2 cups for step 1, 1 cup for later)
9 jumbo egg yolks
1 cup white sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

First, infuse the milk with strawberries. This is how gelato is normally made, and it gives the flavor more intensity. So: put milk and 2 cups of the strawberries in a pot together and bring just to a boil. Turn off heat and let steep about an hour.

Strain the strawberry milk. You can squish the strawberries to get all the liquid and flavor out of them that you can.

Now, in a bowl, combine the yolks, sugar, and salt. Bring that bowl over to the oven with you.

Your strawberry-infused milk should be in a pot. Put burner to medium heat and, while stirring, slowly add the sugary yolks.

This is the tricky part because nature wants to work against you. You want to make a silky-smooth custard but those eggs! They want to separate into clumps and become strawberry-flavored scrambled eggs! The way to avoid this is to decide, right now, that you like stirring the liquid in this pot and that it will be an honor and a pleasure to stir it until it becomes thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Stir the custard until it is, in fact, think enough to coat the back of a spoon. By this I mean: when you bring the spoon out of the liquid and run your finger across the back of that spoon, the track your finger leaves stays there. (A confession: sometimes I get bored with how long it takes to get to this point so I turn up the heat a little bit and promise to stir even more constantly.)

Through a strainer (because even the most zealous stirring can't escape a bit of solidified egg or two), pour your delicious custard into a bowl. Stir in vanilla. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day: bust out your ice cream maker! Remember that extra cup of chopped strawberries? About 20 minutes into the ice cream making process, throw those in and let your maker incorporate them into the ice cream.

Serve with the angel food cake you used all those egg whites on! Oh man, wait a minute, how do you make that angel food cake?

Angel food cake
Adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

1 cup flour
1 1/2 cups white sugar
9 jumbo ROOM TEMPERATURE egg whites (or however many it takes to get 1 3/4 cups egg whites*)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350º, put a rack in the middle of your oven, prepare a tube pan by which I mean: make sure it's clean. Don't grease it. (Really!)

Sift the flour and sugar together FOUR times. At least.

In a large bowl, start beating the egg whites until they get a little frothy. Are they really room temperature? They should be, because it makes your life, as the person beating the eggs, much easier. Why? Because the heat, or lack of cold, helps denature the egg protein, making it easier for that protein to get long and non-kinked. Or something like that. If any scientist is reading this (I mean YOU, Chemistry Department), please disregard any science I mention.

Once frothy, add the salt, cream of tartar, and vanilla to the egg whites. Put your electric beater on high and beat until you get to a stage in between soft and stiff peaks, but closer to stiff. Don't get lazy: the air you are putting into these egg whites is the ONLY thing that will be holding your cake up, since there's no leavening. It needs as much air as possible.

In 6 additions, sprinkle the flour/sugar mixture over the egg whites (you could even sift each addition over the egg whites) and gently, gently fold to combine. Gently.

Once all flour/sugar has been incorporated, gently spread the batter into the tube pan.

Bake 35-40 minutes, until cake is golden brown and, when touched, springs back.

When cool, run a knife around the edge of the tube pan and, even though ungreased, your cake will come free.

Handy cooling method: set the cake on a bottle.

*If using 9 egg whites doesn't get you 1 3/4 cups, add another one. Throw that extra egg yolk into the custard—whatever, right?