Brownies and Zucchini

After my first try at using the Ice Cream Maker, I decided to give it another shot.  This time, FroYo style!  Personally, I am a huge fan of frozen yogurt.  Even before the big FroYo craze, I almost always preferred chocolate frozen yogurt to chocolate ice cream.  My body like frozen yogurt better as well.  🙂

Then, a few years ago when I was visiting a good friend at NYU, I went to Pinkberry.  Dare I say I became a bit obsessed with this place after that visit? Yes, New York City was ahead on this FroYo craze and I came home wanting more!

A short time afterwards, I was in Chicago.  Chicago is a pretty big city, maybe they have a Pinkberry that I didn’t know about?  So I searched the internet.  No go. BUT they DO have a place called Berry Chill (Now Closed).  Chicago’s version of Pinkberry. Very very similar and very very good.  (To those of you who I will be meeting in Chicago at HLS in a few weeks, there happens to be a Berry Chill within a mile of the hotel. Aaaaand I just learned that they deliver.  Oh dear.)

I realize that there is one of these fancy FroYo places in the city that I live called Red Mango.  It opened a couple of years ago and sadly I have never been there.  Yet.  This needs to change.

So, Tuesday I made my first attempt at my very own FroYo.  The recipe is from Food Network Magazine, you can find it here.  I chose it because it looked pretty easy, and used simple ingredients.  Unfortunately, upon starting the recipe I realized that I didn’t have any corn syrup.  (Have I mentioned that I often forget things/don’t read instructions thoroughly? Yeah this is not a good habit.)  Luckily, after some research, I found out that I could use honey instead of light corn syrup, so I was good to go.

I was hoping to have this post up by Tuesday night – because I am impatient and wanted my FroYo! But, the version of FroYo that I tried Tuesday night, was still a lot like cold yogurt…not quite ice cream consistency yet.  I attempted to make it look pretty, by adding some sliced strawberries on top, but it just wasn’t ready.  🙁

This is what it looked like Tuesday night:

Yeah, definitely still looks like yogurt with strawberries.

So tonight I tried again.  Right out of the freezer it was too hard.  Very frozen and ice crystally.  So I let it sit out for about 1/2 hour.  After that it was more managable – but still not the consistency I was looking for.

You can’t really tell from the photo, but even when it was soft enough to form into balls, it still was pretty icy in texture.  Any idea what I might have done wrong?

Obviously I don’t have a soft serve machine, so my version will never be as good as the real Pinkberry, but once I get the icyness taken care of, this definitely has possibilities.

Ease: A, oh how I love my ice cream maker.  Measure and mix ingredients, pour into ice cream maker.  Done.
Taste: B, not quite as good as I was hoping.

Will I make it again? Yes, I haven’t given up on this one yet.

Ice cream or FroYo?  What is your favorite topping?

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Filed under: Dessert, Frozen Yogurt Tagged: | dessert, frozen yogurt