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Sue Kidd is the Lifestyle Editor at The News Tribune and the ringleader for the Food and Home&Garden sections. She has worked as a food journalist at Northwest newspapers since 1993, most recently as a food writer, editor and restaurant reviewer in King County before joining The News Tribune in 2004. Her food obsessions at the moment are honey, cheese and oysters.
Craig Sailor is the Arts&Entertainment editor at The News Tribune. He grew up on a garlic farm near Gilroy, Calif. and now farms oysters in his spare time at Willapa Bay. He’s traveled the world from Kyoto/Kuala Lumpur/Hong Kong to Zanzibar in search of great food.
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Chef William Mueller's Guinness ice cream combines the stout beer with cream, sugar and vanilla. Photo by Jeremy Harrison/The News Tribune
You have to be a gutsy chef to serve your diners something like Guinness ice cream. Gutsy is a good description for Chef William Mueller, who owns Babblin’ Babs Bistro in Proctor with wife Shannon.
Mueller is the chef who last year gave chocolate covered bacon a shot, after all. Last St. Patrick’s Day, he served the Guinness ice cream.
I could see how an ice cream made with a stout beer like Guinness could work. A bitter beer, mixed with rich cream and sweetened with sugar, is akin to a popular ice cream that also employs a bitter ingredient as a foundation – coffee ice cream. But a problem with using a bitter flavor base is achieving balance between bitter and sweet. Ice cream with a bitter bite doesn’t suit most palates.
I asked Mueller for a recipe, and I tested it over the weekend.
