If you make your own ice cream, what is your favorite recipe?

My new favorite is the NYT corn ice cream recipe.

http://www.nytimes.com/recipes/1014934/Sweet-Corn-Ice-Cream-With-Blackberry-Verbena-Sauce.html

Jenis

My three favorite are:

Boysenberry
Very nostalgic for me. My Father (By way of mine and my brother’s tired arms) made this every week each summer when I was a kid because we had a ton of boysenberry vines in the garden. The best, especially a scoop over my Mom’ Boysenberry cobbler. This is perfection.

Cherry Vanilla
A whole split Madagascar Vanilla bean in the ice Cream base, Fresh Cherry reduction in the mix and sliced cherries folded in after it comes out of the bucket. It’s a great combo. I’m not even that big on Cherries but this works so well.

Raspberry
I made this for the first time this summer. It’s really good, especially when you freeze up some of the raspberries and take them out of the freezer , let them thaw just a bit and break up into bits to mix into the raspberry Ice Cream when it comes out of the bucket. It’s really tart and tasty.

There are so many I love though. I don’t buy store bought ice cream anymore… and I try new stuff all the time. I did Chocolate Chocolate Chip & Peanut Butter last week. That was sick.

I’m going to try out the corn ice cream Bill. Thanks for the link.

My wife just made the Balsamic Caramel from Humphrey Slocumbe that was completely ridiculous.

Sounds great. Found the recipe on-line. You need to scroll down a little to find it:

I made some Guinness ice cream recently that was good and was awesome on brownies, but the peanut butter ice cream from The Perfect Scoop book is easy and tasty – and I hate peanut butter.

k.

Made Strawberry Ice Cream last week…

Just realized I had the pictures on my camera.

It was good, but needed more strawberry puree in the mix (and less volume in the bucket too)… To be honest, I don’t like strawberries so I don’t know that I’ll be making this again… my son likes them so maybe I will… who knows.

I really like the Thomas Keller coffee ice cream. I tried to make his cherry ice cream as well, absolutely terrible. I didn’t get the right kind of cherries, so I’m not sure if that was the problem, but it was not good.

Thanks for the recommendation. I made it over Labor Day and it was a big hit.

Joel, that strawberry ice cream looks great. Can you share the technique/recipe/ratio of ingredients?

No pictures but last night I made

Mint Chip Ice Cream (with Broken up Thin Mint Cookie bits)

Almond Ice Cream (Also, put chopped almonds in it)

and my new favorite, so simple, yet perfect…

Vanilla Bean w/ Choc Chip Ice Cream - - This is such a simple recipe, but it’s just so damn good. Especially when you use high quality Madagascar Vanilla Beans. They’re expensive but worth it.

By the way, I retired my ice bucket a couple months ago. Got the Cuisinart ICE-30BC 2-Quart Ice Cream Maker with a couple extra cylinders to keep in the freezer so I can now make larger amounts on shorter notice inside the house with very little clean up or mess. Man, I didn’t realize how much of a pain the ice bucket and salt truly was…

Lemoncello

Bourbon

This morning I made: Butter Pecan Ice Cream

A request from my son… Not sure why I didn’t try this before. It’s pretty damn awesome!

Took 8 oz chopped pecans and roasted them in a pan with 4 tbs butter, added in 4 tbs dark brown sugar. Placed aside to cool for a while, drained the butter that wasn’t absorbed and placed in fridge in a porcelain bowl until I was ready to make ice cream.

I made a large batch for this one and it took two separate runs in the ice cream maker.

4 cups half and half
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
Half of a Madagascar vanilla bean
6 egg yolks
2 1/2 cups dark brown sugar

Put the half and half, cream, salt and vanilla bean contents in a sauce pan and slowly heat to about 140 degrees.

In a separate glass bowl, whisk the yolks for a few minutes to put some air in them. Slowly and in small batches mix in the dark brown sugar. Little bit at a time, whisk in… Make your sweetener for the custard mix.

Once the cream mixture is up to 140, turn off heat and slowly tempur it into the sugar yolk mixture. Once this is mixed, pour it back into the sauce pan and turn the heat back on… Low!

While stirring regularly with a whisk, Bring this slowly up to about 165 and then turn off heat… You want to try and get this as close to 170 without going over. You’re killing salmonella, but you don’t want this to curdle on you.

Once this is done, pour the mixture through a strainer into a glass container(s) and place in your fridge overnight. I use some quart Ball jars. Works great for me.

The next day just pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and put in the candied butter pecans near the end of the process. If you have a cuisenart maker, just dump them in at the end, for a closed top, fold them in after your done and before you’re put in the container.

One tip I learned from watching Good Eats, I always put my ice cream in single serving 4 or 8 oz plastic reusable/disposable Glad containers. This way they are easy to go and refreezing homemade ice cream is bad. Makes it grainy…

Enjoy!

Got my wife an ice cream cake from Humphrey Slocumb for her Bday - Secret Breakfast and the Vietnamese Coffee - so tasty.

Ah, the traditional ice cream and frozen dessert threads ramp up again as the weather gets nicer. I’ve taken to experimenting with blender-made ice cream. No fancy ice cream maker needed as long as you know what you’re doing. Here was my first successful attempt at a Philadelphia style eggless ice cream:

*1 1/2 cups local strawberries, frozen rock solid

  • 2 cups whole 35% whipping cream
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp homemade artisanal vanilla extract

Preparation could not be easier but has to be watched carefully depending on what kind of blender you are using. Simply throw in the cream, milk, vanilla, sugar and then the strawberries into the blender in that order. Pulse away at high speed until everything the frozen fruit breaks down and the sugar is dissolved. You may need to use a wooden spoon to shove down the fruit.

Essentially, you are blending until the mixture has the consistency of a really thick milk shake. The difference between using a blender and frozen ingredients vs. an ice cream maker and liquid ingredients is thusly:

  1. With the ice cream maker, you are breaking up ice crystals as they form in your ice cream and dispersing them throughout the liquid to smooth out the consistency of the final frozen treat;

  2. With the blender, you are breaking up ice crystals that have already formed in one of the frozen ingredients and dispersing them throughout the liquid to smooth out the consistency of the final frozen treat

Once the blended “milkshake” is done, you can either serve as a milkshake or put it in a container and harden it in the freezer. Voila. Superfast blender made ice cream. Please note that for this to work, you need one frozen component and one liquid component. That’s why this works really well with fruit flavored ice creams.

Once I got the hang of this, all other styles of ice cream were easy to figure out how to do in the blender style. What if you prefer a custard based style ice cream? Simple. I made the custard base first and let it cool. Then put everything in the blender and whizz away.

Okay, so what if you prefer a flavor of ice cream that doesn’t use fruit, such as chocolate peanut butter or vanilla or whatever have you? Easy. I just freeze the MILK only in ice cube trays and keep the cream as the liquid component. If it’s a custard based ice cream, use the cream only to make the custard base with. The reason why you want the milk frozen is that it has more water in it than the cream does and so will provide more ice crystals to break up in the blender.

I almost feel bad now that in the previous ice cream thread I helped convince people to buy ice cream makers when they most likely have the easiest ice cream making instrument already in their kitchen. Everyone should give this a shot this Summer.

Let me leave you guys with the recipe for a fresh Minty Grapefruit Sorbet with Limoncello that I have taken to serving as a palate cleanser and which I wrote about in my tasting menu post. This requires a slight variation on the steps as a double blending is required, once with the raw ingredients and again once frozen:

  • 2 cups IN TOTAL whole peeled, seeded, demembraned and segmented pink grapefruit (I actually only needed one large Florida organic pink grapefruit to pull this off)
  • 1 cup clean or preferably bottled spring water
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp pure peppermint oil or peppermint extract

For this refreshing sorbet, you want to completely peel the grapefruit, break up the segments, and then use a knife to completely remove the membrane off of the individual segments. Essentially, you are scooping the pure citrus pulp sacs from the grapefruit and dumping them into your blender. Make sure you wind up with two cups worth of whole fruit. This took me only one large grapefruit as noted above but I guess it will depend on the size of the ones you can get.

Add the water and the sugar and the extract/oil next and blend away. Pour into a container and put into the freezer and let freeze overnight. Now you might think this would leave you with one annoying solid block of ice but the truth is that the inclusion of pulp and not just liquid in the sorbet does give it some texture so it will actually be easy to break up and scoop out back into your blender. I actually let mine freeze completely overnight.

Once scooped out into the blender, simply pulse away until all the ice crystals are broken up and you have something resembling the texture of a fine slushie or sno-cone. Pour this back into your container and put back in the freezer and this time let it completely solidify. Voila, fresh blender sorbet.

I’ll be throwing up more recipes over the summer. Enjoy.

Some really good looking recipes here. Balsamic caramel sounds awesome.

My current favorite creation is banana buttermilk egg-less ice cream.

The natural sugars in the overripe banana perfectly complement the molasses-characters of the muscovado. These along with the alcohol in the Irish cream and vanilla bean paste, and fat in the double cream, all help make it spoonable straight out of the freezer (eliminating the need to thaw/refreeze).

Make sure your bananas are brown all over with a translucent mushy texture inside. Keep them in a tied plastic bag to help them ripen quickly and evenly all over (natural ethylene gas!) and to keep fruit flies off.


Banana Buttermilk Ice Cream

2 overripe bananas
2.5 cups (20 oz or 600ml) well-shaken buttermilk
1.25 cups (10 oz or 300ml) rich double cream (not thickened cream)
1/3 cup muscovado cane sugar
1/4 cup Baileys Irish Cream
1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste
1/4 teaspoon very finely ground himalayan pink salt or sea salt.

Blend very well with stick mixer. Chill well for a few hours, whack in ice cream maker, freeze. Enjoy!

I’ll have to try out the Banana Buttermilk.

I tried a new one last week that came out VERY good.

Chocolate Bacon Ice Cream.

I made my standard Chocolate Ice Cream but with the added twist of Chocolate covered Bacon bits in it. It’s a great balance of salty and sweet.

I cooked a pound of bacon, well done and crispy. Let it cool and cut up into small bits, almost 1/4" by 1" strips. I then melted some Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate chips in a double boiler and added in the bacon bits. coated them well and laid them out on parchment paper. I spread them out well and placed them in the fridge to cool. Once they were completely cool, I broke them up into bits (needed some help from a knife) and added them into the chocolate ice cream at the end of the cycle in the ice cream maker.

It’s pretty damn awesome.

I will say you really need to cook the bacon well done. Anything that is undercooked will taste a bit weird when frozen.