Tag Archives: ice cream

Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream

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It’s almost too late for pumpkins but Thanksgiving isn’t Thanksgiving to me without pumpkin. My usual contribution to my large family’s Thanksgiving feasts back in LA was pumpkin pie, and it’s been on the menu since hosting dinner with friends. This year, Pruitt and I decided on macaron ice cream sandwiches filled with pumpkin ice cream. I think of it as our modified version of pumpkin pie, perfect for those already tackling a 22-lb turkey, five sides, and pecan pie.

 

pumpkin pie ice cream 2

This recipe is adapted from Jeni Britton Bauer’s Roasted Pumpkin 5-Spice Ice Cream recipe, included in Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home.  As Pruitt mentioned in a previous post, Jeni’s recipes call for cream cheese instead of egg yolks, which results in creamier (not icy) ice cream. The honey and pumpkin (and additional cream cheese) also give the ice cream a velvety texture. The spices can be adjusted as necessary.  I started off with 1/8 teaspoon of each and had to increase significantly to get a bolder spice taste.  The hardest part is stirring the milk mixture while it heats up. I usually have music playing or chat/switch off with Pruitt while we wait for it to boil.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Ginger & Cardamom Ice Cream with Crystallized Ginger Chunks, or Why Pokémon Training is the Perfect Analogy for Ice Cream Making

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The presence of free-roaming water molecules is what separates delicious ice cream from crappy, icy milk. Think of water molecules as wild Pokémon, waiting to jump out of the tall grass to attack you and ruin your ice cream. Your job as ice cream maker is similar to that of a Pokémon trainer: you must use the Pokémon/ingredients in your roster – in this case, sugar, starch and protein – to capture the wild roaming water molecules and put them to work for you.

Ginger ice cream

When Rhys and I got married last summer, my lovely coworkers got us a 2 Quart Cuisinart ice cream maker, along with a copy of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home to help get me started. While Jeni’s recipes are delicious and inspiring, the true asset of the cookbook is its ice cream base recipe, which provides a solid foundation for experimenting with other flavor combinations as well.

In the place of egg yolks, Jeni uses cream cheese as the primary source of protein to “capture” the water molecules in the ice cream mixture, giving it that smooth, velvety texture once frozen. When heated, the casein in the cream cheese binds with the water molecules in the milk and cream, preventing them from sticking together and forming ice chunks once frozen. Since you only need about 3 tablespoons of the stuff, the cream cheese barely contributes any taste to the final product. Plus, there is no risk of leaving scrambled eggs in your ice cream (yuck).

Here, the base serves as a great conduit for the ginger and cardamom flavors.

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