Frozen Limoncello Parfaits

Surviving the weekend: brought to you by sore feet, bruised knuckles, and burnt finger tips.

Yeah — I just started a new job.

Other than a few mishaps here and there, everything is going well — it’s not my ideal type of work (their pastry is very “homey” and everything gets garnished with a gooseberry), but I work with friendly people and I stay pretty busy on dessert station most of the night.

That said, having the last two months off has definitely been nice.

As a person who’s almost always had kind of employment (and school) going on since age 15, finally being able to afford some downtime has been unreal.

I went to the beach, slept in, caught up with friends, did nothing, made sketches of desserts and played around in my tiny kitchenette on more productive days.

Sigh — going back to work is always bitter-sweet…

On one hand I love working and being busy, but on the other hand I like being able to sit around with a glass of wine whenever I want.

Oh, and making tasty things whenever I want, like frozen limoncello parfaits.

Passion Fruit & Lime Sorbet

First off: apologies. For reals.

I used to be one of those people without an ice cream machine — doomed to gawk in awe and envy of fellow food bloggers with the means of churning their very own frozen desserts.

So, if you don’t have access ice cream machine, I’m sorry whatever unwanted salivation these photos may induce.

Howeverrrrrr — if you can afford to get one, do it!

My recently acquired ice cream machine is one of the best damned things in my cramped and teeny-tiny kitchen — no joke! — and making ice cream at home tastes way better and ultimately costs a lot less than the chemical-laden stuff at the supermarket.

I’ve been having tons of fun (and failures — cough cough) with coming up with my own recipes, too!

This passion fruit and lime sorbet is creamy and refreshing at the same time, and (who knows what sorcery this be!) the taste reminded me and my taste testers of key-lime pie filling. Seriously.

Convinced yet?

Minty Mojito Freeze

If you haven’t heard of the Mojito cocktail, then I can’t imagine what rock you’ve been living under.

And, if you’ve never had a Mojito, then you don’t know what you’re missing!

It’s like lime and mint and sugar and rum have a party inside a Collins glass springform pan and your mouth is invited!

I love lime and mint together, but I make a point of not drinking pop, so when a coworker of mine was kind enough to drop off a pile of her old Kraft magazines, I got excited when I spied this recipe for a “Mojito Freeze” in one of the summer issues.

There were a few problems with the original recipe of course — I had to replace the Cool Whip (what is that stuff, anyways?) with real whipped cream and then I added some rum flavour to make it more cocktail-like!

But I was still a little skeptical at first — as someone who works in a liquor store and thinks that drinking is serious business, whether or not it was possible to capture all that awesome refreshing taste of a Mojito in a frozen pie seemed questionable (so glad I was wrong on this one).

Also, I had never made a frozen dessert.