As autumn arrived my ice cream ideas transitioned from mint and berries to warming and harvest-y flavours. I was craving pumpkin pie but the idea of frozen, cold pumpkin ice cream failed to appeal. Oh, I’m sure someone has made a delicious version of it but I don’t like making anything if the planning doesn’t have me salivating at least a bit. So I went for the next best thing: apple pie ice cream.
Homemade golden delicious applesauce, heavy on the cinnamon added to what’s become my standard custard base: 3 cups of a heavy cream, coffee cream and whole milk mixture, the ratios depending on how decadent I feel that day, 5 egg yolks and 2/3 cups to 3/4 cups of sugar, depending on how much sugar the flavour additions have. In this case, I used less sugar so there wouldn’t be too much competition with the subtle apple sugars.
I strained the applesauce but still ended up adding some of the leftover pulp to the custard, which included bits of apple peel. Oops. Yes, much easier to peel an apple before you cut it. I hoped it would add some depth to the final treat:
The master plan was to bake mini-pie crusts in a muffin tin for ice cream “serving cups” but things were busy…maybe next fall. So really, it was just apple cinnamon ice cream. Though unless you knew that beforehand, it was actually quite hard to pinpoint the flavour. There were tones of coconut and pineapple, hints of spice. Very much like a dessert served at an Indian restaurant. After a few guesses, Aaron said the mystery of the flavour could drive him mad. “Mad Apple” ice cream: a catchy name but ice cream shouldn’t be so mind bending.
Would I make it again? Maybe. But I would add pie crust chunks and serve it topped with stewed apple.
This past summer I broke down and bought myself an ice cream maker. I had been wanting one for years but was dissuaded by worries that making my own ice cream would prevent a trim figure and that it was a frivolous reason to own an extra kitchen appliance. So I would eat chocolate instead.
There was also the idea that I’d make my anticipated first batch of homemade ice cream and would be sorely disappointed. Like I was with the only batch that ever came from the Donvier hand-churned ice cream machine I was given when I was 9. We used a recipe for a non-custard ice cream; only vanilla, sugar and milk, probably 2% at that. It was ice cream with no soul.
But after saying “I want an ice cream maker” countless times to friends and spending hours inventing flavours in my head, I made a pact with myself that the machine would not collect dust in the cupboard and bought the Cuisinart Pure Indulgence 2 Qt. Frozen Yogurt-Sorbet & Ice Cream Maker. And dust it has not collected…
I started with rudimentary Vanilla. The result was a rich and creamy ice cream that really tasted of all the simple ingredients it was made with: milk, cream, eggs, sugar and vanilla bean.
Then I moved on to other flavours (that were sadly not captured on camera)…
Strawberry: I learned that too much water from the berries made a more crystallized and less creamy ice cream. I also learned that chunks of strawberry turn into miniature ice cubes that really dampen the ice cream/mouth party.
Butter Pecan: Delicious!
Raspberry: Learning from the strawberry, I boiled the raspberries into a syrup (still fairly runny) and the result was a much creamier ice cream with a blast of raspberry flavour.
Flavour X: I can’t reveal this one yet. Top secret. It was so amazingly delicious.
And one you can see! Peach Maple Pecan: Umm, not bad but…confusing? It was like my mouth couldn’t figure out whether I was lounging in an orchard on a hot summer day or sitting by a glowing fireplace with friends on a rainy evening.
I tried to squeeze the latest batch in before the end of summer: Mint Chocolate Chip. I followed David Lebovitz’s recipe (he’s the other of “A Perfect Scoop” and famous in the homemade ice cream sphere) with no deviations save for infusing the mint for 2 hours instead of one. Oops.
After steeping, I continued to make the ice cream but was worried by the very strong fragrance of mint and plant. The ice cream smelled like a garden. Kind of nice but what would it taste like?
After chilling the custard, mixing and then more freezing, I tasted the ice cream and was disappointed. It did taste like plant.
But wait a minute…maybe another bite. The chocolate was delicious, if I quickly sucked the ice cream away from the chocolate, I’d be left with tasty bits in every spoonful. Let’s pan for gold! I kept on eating though as I ate, I realized the ice cream was indeed very delicious, plant-taste and all. It ended up a success.
I think I’ll still try another batch using mint extract instead of the real thing, for comparison. But maybe not till next summer. Now is the time to explore fall flavours…