FoCo Joe: Orange Caramel Vanilla Sundae
HELLO WORLD, I AM BACK. I am so excited to be on campus again!
A new term is upon us, and like a new season of my favorite Netflix show, I want to binge binge binge on everything. As a senior, though, I know better. Binging is not conducive to the general pace of life at Dartmouth, let alone all the things I’ve got on my plate now that I’m here.
I was off in the spring and summer, and I was lucky enough to write about some of my favorite desserts dispersed across my unparalleled hometown: San Francisco. All in all it was a good six months — I was able to attend my sister’s high school graduation and even sent her off to college with a hug.
But let’s be clear — I’m happy to be back. Even though some small part of me wants pack up and head back home, I have a deep sense of clarity on the whole year that is to come. It’s as if I almost need to be here, to wrap up my Dartmouth experience nicely with a pretty, perfectly tied bow. A big, red bow. Yes.
I am pleased to also announce that this year I will be writing an additional column for The Mirror, titled “Joe Kind, a Guy.” I will be writing about my life outside of my FoCo creations, which may not sound like much — it’s not — but will ultimately be a really exciting opportunity for me as a “writer.” Check it out if you have time.
I thought of my first dessert for 15F during a five-minute meditation practice just before leaving home. I do not meditate frequently, but honestly I kind of wish I did. Somehow, for some weird reason, this dessert just came to me. Before I forget — shoutout to one of tha room!3z Dan Whitcomb ’16 for helping me settle on the name of this rather exciting treat.
This dessert requires an orange, a scoop of vanilla ice cream,and caramel sauce. Fair warning: this dessert is relatively demanding to prepare.
Step 1: Grab the prettiest orange you can find in FoCo’s fruit bins. Take a dark blue bowl — dark blue looks best with the orange, according to my consultants — and a cup of any color. Back at your seat, slice the orange in half along its equator. Take your time with this step to reduce the likelihood of flyaway juice.
Step 2: Pit one or both halves of the orange, depending on how much juice you want. Dump all the contents – pulp, seeds, everything – into the cup. The pitted orange doesn’t have to be as barren as a Halloween pumpkin, but make sure to leave enough room for a scoop of ice cream to sit perfectly inside it. Now you might be seeing where this is going!
Step 3: Place the pitted orange half into the bowl. Bring orange in said bowl to FoCo’s ice cream area. I recommend leaving the orange in the bowl for maximum control, but that is up to you. Squeeze out a spoonful’s worth of caramel into the orange, then scoop one proper scoop of vanilla ice cream into the orange.
I am not able to say with authority that vanilla ice cream is better than vanilla soft serve for this dessert (an eternal struggle for those of you who may not have read previous FoCo Joe columns) because the soft-serve machine was out of order all last week. It’s okay, DDS — despite your concerns I survived. But let’s hope the soft serve comes back to us sooner rather than later. Regardless, I do think the thick creaminess of the vanilla ice cream is a better counterpart for the pure orange flavor of the fruit.
Step 4: Drizzle a touch — read, a touch — more caramel and chocolate syrup on top and promptly head back to your seat to add the freshly squeezed OJ. Use your spoon as a filter for the seeds and extreme pulp when pouring the juice.
I hope you all enjoyed your first week of 15F as much as I did. It is exciting to be back!