What a Difference a Few Ingredients Make

I received a lovely gift today - a partially filled ice cube tray, full of egg yolks! You can always count on your mother for random stuff like that. In her defense, I did ask that she freeze egg yolks for me when she makes eggs (1 whole egg + 1 egg white = 1 egg yolk for the spoon!). This means that I will have to cede my jar full of frozen egg whites that is sitting in my freezer. Yes, that's a jar FULL. And then some. What can I say, I make a lot of ice cream! But then again, I post nearly all of my ice cream creations, so regular readers probably do realize that I get through a lot of ice cream.

Anyway - if you'll notice - the four yolks at the bottom are noticeably more "orange" than their other chicken embryo friends. I'm not a food scientist or animal biologist - but it is commonly correlated that the more orange the yolks the more organic/free range the egg is. There was an news expose in China (communicated to me via the mothership) that showed chicken "farmers" were able to take requests on how yellow or orange the yolks would turn out - according to their clients' wishes. I do hope none of those shenanigans go down here in Canada - but it goes to show the scientific malleable our food is.

I've always been a staunch believe of eating local and eating well (haha, sometimes too well) and using quality ingredients. If it's local and quality, then even better! One local gem is the Avalon Dairy - it's a fully operational dairy that is smack-dab in the middle of the city. No cows unfortunately, but a good chunk of the processing is done there. They also have a retail shop that sells their delicious goods. I have wanted to visit the dairy for a long time and on an extended vacation - I was granted my wish. I picked up a full top-to-bottom dairy collection: yogurt, cream, milk, and butter. Unfortunately the butter still sits in my fridge - I haven't quite found the perfect shortbread recipe worthy of the product.

The yogurt was eaten (gobbled down, more like) and the cream and milk were transformed into ice cream. I was greedy and couldn't choose a flavour - so I made two: a vanilla and chocolate.
The vanilla was enhanced with brandy and real vanilla bean, and flecked with dark chocolate shards. The chocolate was composed of dark chocolate callets and espresso powder.

So was it worth it? Definitely. The texture and flavor of the cream was full, rich, and velvety. I wanted to keep the experience as pure as possible - why cover up a quality ingredient? Let them shine on their own! It's experiences like these that make you appreciate a city where quality ingredients are found - just around the corner.