Two pups, two muns

[cook_the_rude]

Today, Dr. Hannibal Lecter and a ten-year-old redhead known to be a younger version of Milliways' favourite baker are busy in the kitchen, making ice cream.

It's a slightly unusual kind, and involves grinding up gingerbread.

Comments

[sunbaked_baker]

"Oh!" she says, watching the ingredients be mixed. "That makes sense."

[cook_the_rude]

Dr. Lecter mixes in some more whipped cream. "There are even methods of stirring ice cream while it is freezing to keep it nice and soft," he says.

[sunbaked_baker]

"I think that's the method I've heard about? Charlie had talked about getting an ice-cream maker for the coffeehouse."

[cook_the_rude]

"Ideally, it's conched, just like chocolate," Dr. Lecter says.

[sunbaked_baker]

"'Conched'?" the ten-year-old echoes, unfamiliar with the term but curious.

[cook_the_rude]

"That's a machine in which you slowly mix, scrape and roll your ingredients, agitating them for hours to make the flavour bearing particles and the grease combine ideally, bringing out all the flavours," Dr. Lecter explains. "If you do something like that to ice cream as it is slowly freezing, you get superior flavour and smooth texture as well."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Oh," Rae says, considering this. "I'm not all that familiar with how chocolate's made -"

Yet.

"- I just know I like it. It makes sense, though, that slowly mixing all the ingredients over a long time would make it smoother and taste better. It's not the same with baking. If you over-mix, you end up with bricks. The ripening of the flavor happens afterwards, while the dough rises, and while the bread cools."

[cook_the_rude]

"The heat brings out the flavour," Dr. Lecter says, "and where there is no heat needed, the friction in conching can replace it."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Heat in ice-cream would be counter-productive," the girl grins. "So conching it is. Or whipped cream."

[cook_the_rude]

"Exactly," Dr. Lecter says, stirring in more of it.