Did Someone Say Ice Cream?

Spring is officially here! The last week of winter here in Sydney felt decidedly summer-ish, with temperatures in the high 20's. With a winter that warm, I don't even want to think about how warm our upcoming summer will be!

With the weather warming up, I intend to give my new ice cream maker a thorough work out. Do you remember last year when I was lamenting what to do with egg yolks when I was making macarons most weekends? Well, I haven't actually made any macarons at all so far this year (something that will be remedied sooner or later), and now my freezer is filling up with egg whites. A few weeks ago I made 2 different batches of friands in an effort to clear them out, but after this latest ice cream adventure, I'm right back where I started, with about 23 (yes, you read right - 23!) egg whites in the freezer. So, maybe I've been building up a supply ready to make some macarons, but just haven't gotten around to it yet. Methinks maybe there'll be some more friands coming out of my oven sooner than macarons though.

Cinnamon Ice Cream

Chocolate and Caramel Pecan Ice Cream

Chocolate Swirl Ice Cream

This is the second batch of ice cream that I've made, and I decided to mix up a larger than normal batch and churn it in 2 goes so I could make more flavours. I actually ended up with 3 flavours.

I used the standard French Vanilla Ice cream recipe that came with the KitchenAid ice cream maker, and then added some other flavours (see below). Here's the recipe I used for the ice cream.

French Vanilla Ice Cream

600ml milk
8 egg yolks
230g (1 cup) sugar
600ml thickened cream
4 tspn vanilla essence
pinch of salt

1. Heat milk over medium heat until very hot but not boiling, stirring often. Set aside
2. Using wire whip attachment, beat egg yolks and sugar on speed 2 until thickened. Slowly add heated milk, mix until blended.
3. Return to saucepan and stir over medium heat until bubbles appear around edges and mixture is steaming.
4. Pour back into bowl, and stir in cream, vanilla and salt.
5. Chill thoroughly, at least 8 hours
6. Assemble ice cream maker, and turn onto speed 1. Pour mixture into freeze bowl, and churn for 15 - 20 minutes
7. Put in freezer and see if you can wait until it's frozen before you go to eat it

I scaled the recipe up and used 10 egg yolks. This made approx 7 1/2 cups of mixture before being churned, and a total of about 2.4 litres of ice cream.

The first batch that I churned I used about 4 1/2 cups of the mixture, to which I added approx 45g of chopped up cadbury dairy milk chocolate (I figured a ratio of 10g per cup of mixture was as good an amount as any). For half of this, I swirled through some Hershey's chocolate syrup before I froze it. The other half has some caramel pecan not praline swirled through it. When I say not praline, it's because I didn't want a hard praline that you might risk breaking your teeth on when it was frozen, but more of a caramel sauce. Here's how I made it.

Caramel pecans

100g sugar
50g butter, cubed
50ml cream
100g chopped pecans
Generous pinch of sea salt

1. Dry toast pecans in a frypan until they start to brown, set aside
2. Place sugar in saucepan and melt over medium heat, swirling or even stirring until all sugar is melted. Continue to heat until it turns a beautiful caramel colour - be careful not to burn though!
3. Add butter and stir to combine (may not all combine, but that's OK)
4. Pour in cream, keep stirring to combine
5. Bring to boil, keep boiling until a drop of caramel forms a soft ball when dropped in cold water
6. Pour in pecans, stir to combine, pour out onto a greased tray
7. Sprinkle with sea salt
8. It won't set on the tray, but it will cool down quicker and will be easier to eat with a spoon transfer into your icecream 

I used about 3/4 of this mixture in approx 750ml of ice cream. The end volume was about 900ml of ice cream. When I realised that I had omitted the salt from the ice cream recipe I decided to add the sea salt to this. The chocolate swirl ice cream did not set properly, and has an icy texture. You can tell from the picture above that it started to melt as soon as I scooped it out. The consistency is more like soft serve. The pecan ice cream has a similar icy texture (but not quite as icy), but set just fine. Thank you sea salt!

What do you mean what happened to the rest of the pecans? All I can say is that it had all disappeared by afternoon tea.

For the rest of the ice cream mixture, I added 1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon (and some salt), and stirred that through the mixture before churning. I am pleased to report that it set just fine, and has the same creamy texture that my first (unblogged) batch of ice cream had. Never underestimate the importance of salt!