Apple ice cream

I first thought about making this when I first had a conversation with Betty. I'd mentioned that I bought an ice cream maker, so she asked if she'd have many choices of ice cream when she visits me... anyway, she said she didn't have any favorites for ice cream, so I asked her what her favorite dessert was, and she told me it was fruit custard. Since ice cream can be frozen custard (if I use eggs), it wouldn't be a stretch at all to make ice cream with a variety of fruits. Two that came immediately to mind were apples and oranges (more specifically, mandarin oranges, AKA tangerines). I guess that's kind of cliché.

This turned out better than the tangerine ice cream I made earlier (I'll have to try and improve that recipe next time).


2 Granny Smith apples
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 lemon
3/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
pinch of salt

Peel and core the apples. Dice half an apple, and purée the rest. Juice half a lemon and combine with the diced apple, then stir in a little bit of sugar. Set aside and allow to macerate.

Combine the apple purée, sugar, cinnomon, salt, and vanilla extract with a blender on low, for about 2-3 minutes to dissolve the sugar. Combine with heavy cream.

Turn on ice cream maker, and pour in the mixture, as well as the sugar/lemon juice mixture used to macerate the diced apples. When the ice cream is nearly set (20-25 minutes in ice cream maker), add the diced apples. Continue churning for another 5 minutes, or until set.

Move to container and freeze for 2-5 hours for hard set. Earlier (or none at all) for soft serve.

Makes 1 1/2 quarts.

Ice cream triple punch

So this week, I made three different flavors of ice cream. Two I've made before (green tea and coffee), and one I'm experimenting with (tangerine).

I bought disposable pint and quart containers, so now I can keep more than just two flavors at a time in my freezer, and since tangerine is my favorite fruit, I figured I'd try making an ice cream out of it, and see what it's like.

The flavor and texture is fine, as far as ice cream goes... however, I feel that the tangerine flavor is not nearly strong enough. I doubt most people could tell the difference between tangerine and orange in this ice cream form. So I guess if I want strong tangerine flavor in frozen (but not solid block of ice) form, I'll have to try a sorbet, instead. Or maybe a sherbet.

Since I am running out of space in my freezer, I'll have to finish up some of the ice cream before I try making the sorbet. Or give some away.

Maple ice cream

Several years ago, when my aunt Rosa came to visit us from Canada, she brought us some maple syrup. That's when I first found out that the typical syrup we used when having pancakes were actually only "maple-flavored syrup."

A few years ago, I bought some maple syrup while I was at Trader Joe's, but I've never had any chance to use it. After I got myself an ice cream maker, I thought maybe I could try using maple syrup instead of sugar... So here it is--homemade maple ice cream.


The flavor? Well, the maple definitely comes through, having used 3/4 cup of maple syrup. However, it also tastes rather familiar. It seems very similar to the butter pecan ice cream I used to get from Thrifty stores (which are now Rite-Aid stores). Without the pecans, obviously. I guess this explains why so many of the recipes online are for maple pecan ice cream.

Black sesame ice cream

So when Greg got back from Taiwan about three weeks ago, he asked me if I've ever tried sesame ice cream. Apparently he's had a chance to sample some during his trip to the far east, and it happens to be one of the things he liked.

Having never tried it, I can't attest to how it should taste, and I doubt I'd be able to find it at a local restaurant, but as I do have my own ice cream maker, I can always make my own, and hope it tastes as good as the kind that Greg had.

The first thing to do--get myself some sesame powder. I'm certainly not about to try and grind my own. Black sesame is often used as a filling in tangyuan, a Chinese dessert, so I guess that should serve as a good indicator as to how ice cream made from the same ingredient might taste.

After blending heavy cream, half-and-half, sugar, vanilla extract, and sesame powder together, it's in the ice cream maker.

Homemade strawberry ice cream

Edit: This is what it looks like after I melted the original batch and churned it the second time. It's a deeper pink because during the melting and churning process, the strawberry pieces were "cut" smaller, so more of the red got into the mixture. It's much softer than before, although I still should have let it churn for longer.

Following the recipe that came with my ice cream maker, I decided to try and make some strawberry ice cream. Here I have a pint of sliced strawberries, macerated for 2 hours in 3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and 1/3 cup of sugar.

1 cup of milk and 2 cups of heavy cream are first mixed with 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract, 2/3 cup of sugar, and all the lemon/strawberry juice used for maceration. Churn away, ice cream maker!

It says to add the strawberries in the final five minutes. The whole process is supposed to take around 25-35 minutes, so I was just waiting for the 25 minute mark, and checking the consistency of the churn, to pour in the strawberry.

Unfortunately, it seems the recipe they had yielded too much ice cream--the machine can only hold 1 1/2 quart of ice cream total. That means 3 pints. Or 6 cups. The process of making ice cream means that as your mixture freezes, the churning adds air and keeps it from becoming large chunks of ice, so as air is added, the mixture increases in size (anywhere between 25% to 100%). So we've got 1 cup of sugar + 2 cups heavy cream + 1 cup milk + 1 pint (aka 2 cups) strawberry. That's already 6 cups! There's still the extra lemon juice and air unaccounted for! WTF *&^#)*%!

(Why didn't I do the math beforehand? Stupid, stupid, stupid...)

This means that my mixture would overflow when I tried to add the strawberry, and it wouldn't get to the "soft serve" consistency I needed before I put the whole thing in the freezer to set.

What does that mean, in the end? Well, it tastes pretty good, but the texture is not consistent. Parts of it is soft, while others are hard. And the strawberry is not as evenly distributed as I'd like them to be.

Otherwise, it's not too bad. I suppose I can always eat away 1/3 of it first, melt it down, then re-churn the thing.

Next time, I'll decrease the amount of strawberries and milk/cream. That should make for a much more pleasing result.

"Premium" ice cream

Ever since I saw the Good Eats episode on premium ice cream, I've been thinking about getting my own ice cream churning machine to test out the recipe. And see how "premium" differs from regular ice cream. (Although, as it turns out, I have had "premium" ice cream before--Häagen-Dazs is considered "super premium" ice cream.)

So, on Saturday, I set out to the nearby Target and Bed Bath & Beyond (they're in the same plaza, which makes it quite easy). The mission: To find an affordable, easy to use ice cream maker. And if I find one to my liking, I would also need some additional items that I did not possess, but which are required for the making of premium ice cream:

1. Food thermometer
2. Large container (to chill and freeze the ice cream in)
   

The result is mostly a success, although I tried to add green tea flavoring to it, and failed. Many tea bags and powdered green tea packs later, I still do not taste any green tea in the ice cream. So it's basically a premium vanilla ice cream, with (if you can taste any) an extremely faint hint of green tea.

I also found a pack for making green tea ice cream. Just add milk and egg yolk. But with only 3/4 cup of milk, the yield can't be much. Most likely not even a pint. $1.99 for the mix, still need your own milk and egg yolk, it'd have to taste like heaven for me to not just go back to buying ready-made half gallons of green tea ice cream.


On a side note, it looks like Blogger has increased the maximum allowable size for uploaded images. I'll have to try the full-size pic and see what they come out as (at this point, I'm guessing 1600 x 1200) next time.