Growing up, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for me to learn how to cook in the kitchen. My stepmom is an amazing cook but she was always busy and said it would take too long to cook with us, and when I lived with my mother, she was never home at dinner time because she was always working so I cooked dinner for the whole family by myself. I still found myself comfortable in the kitchen thanks to my grandmother. If you go over to my grandmother’s house, she always has cookies in a cookie tin above her china hutch. It’s tradition! One of the ways she kept it full over the years was that whenever I went over to visit we would make cookies. We made chocolate chip cookies all the time.
Now that I have my own children I’m starting to let them help me in the kitchen. It is very hard for me to do because I can’t stand not being in control of the mess. I clean the kitchen as I go and having the kids in there gets out of hand wickedly fast, so I completely understand why my stepmom never wanted to cook with us as kids. My kids and I always do all of our cooking in the kitchen around our KitchenAid Stand Mixer. My husband spoiled me for my birthday this year and upgraded our KitchenAid to the Professional series. I’m quite excited about the upgrade because of the bigger bowl and the new beautiful red color.
The first item for us to make in it was testing out the Ice Cream attachment. We made Double Chocolate ice cream.
Day One: Mixing
Ingredients:
2 Cups Whipping Cream Divided
2 squares semisweet baking chocolate
2 suares unsweetened baking chocolate
2 cups half and half
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
8 egg yolks
4 teaspoons vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
Make sure your ice cream attachment is in the freezer getting cold
In a small saucepan, melt the chocolate and 1/2 cup of the whipping cream over medium low heat stirring frequently
Remove from heat set aside
In a medium saucepan heat the half and half until very hot but not boiling, stirring often
Remove from heat set aside
In a small bowl combine sugar and cocoa powder. Set aside
Place egg yolks in mixer bowl. Use speed 2 and gradually add sugar mixture. Mix about 30 seconds. Continuing on Speed 2, very gradually add chocolate mixtures and half and half; mix until well blended.
Return all of the mixture to medium saucepan, stirring constantly cook over medium heat until small bubbles form around edge and mixture is steamy. Do not boil. 
Transfer half and half mixture into large bowl; stir in remaining 1 1/2 cups whipping cream, vanilla, and salt cover and chill thoroughly at least 8 hours.
Day Two: Ice Cream
Assemble and engage the ice cream attachment to the KitchenAid Stand 
Use stir setting 1
pour ice cream mixture into the ice cream attachment
Stir for 15 minutes
Eat or Place mixture in a freezer safe container and freeze
KitchenAid let me do a live giveaway of their 90th Anniversary KitchenAid Stand Mixer
To Enter:
Leave a comment and tell us what your favorite memory in the Kitchen is.
Extra Entries: only 3
You can only do these once a day!
Follow KitchenAid on twitter, Follow me on twitter and tweet (1 entry):
I just shared my Favorite Kitchen Memory to win a KitchenAid Stand Mixer http://bit.ly/dv78LL #giveaway #contest
Become a fan of KitchenAid on Facebook and leave a message on your status (1 entry)
I just shared my Favorite Kitchen Memory to win a KitchenAid Stand Mixer http://bit.ly/dv78LL
Subscribe to my blog (1 entry)
Giveaway Ends June 5th! All rules can be found under giveaway rules. Please leave a new comment for each entry!
My favorite memory was making Christmas cookies with my mom. She always made sure that we cut a cookie the shape of our hands. We would sit for hours decorating the cookies, laughing & singing Christmas carols. She died when I was 14, but, we kept the tradition up. Last year I became allergic to wheat & was unable for the first time not to make the cookies. But, I still remember the smells & tastes & fun we always had.
My favorite memory in the kitchen was coming home from school and the floor still smelled like it had been cleaned and there were hot peanut butter bars cooling on the counter, just waiting to be eaten.
nordstromemily(at)hotmail(dot)com