Caramel Ice Cream

I know it doesn’t look like much but this tannish blob is caramel ice cream.  In my continual quest to show Martin that other flavors besides cookie dough can be tasty, I have tried to make other flavors for us to enjoy.  This was so rich, we could only eat about a scoop at a time but it’s still pretty tasty.

I used this recipe verbatim, mostly because I’d never made caramel before.  I should have probably tried making just caramel before I muddied up the waters with an ice cream!  My first attempt was straight up DISASTER!  I am talking black burnt cesspool-style mess.  A hot mess, as it were, too.  ;)  I had to boil the caramel out of my pot before I could even start attempt number two.

The recipe is a little vague, saying things like “let boil until a light amber.”  So I’ll just comment a bit on my experiences.

First, I interpreted boil as a full-on rolling boil.  This produced disaster in a pot in a red-hot minute.  So the second time around was more of a slow simmer.  It took longer than the specified time but produced something edible, so I’m not going to complain. 

Before adding the cream, I had warmed it over the stove, which I think helped keep the sugar down to a “furious bubble” rather than “gigantic explosion.”

I also had problems brushing down the side.  Seemed like the water just evaporated on impact and didn’t do anything to dissolve sugar crystals.  Anyone with caramel-making experience, can you comment on this?

And there you go.  Next time, I will add fewer egg yolks, because it’s really, really rich and I could even detect a bit of egg flavor coming through.   This is definitely a “coat your mouth” ice cream - a little will go a long way!

Ice Cream Sandwich Ice Cream

I know what you’re thinking. I bet it’s similar to the look on Martin’s face, when I announced I was going to make it.

“I don’t get it.”

Yeah, I too was once like you and didn’t get it. But a recent trip to visit Blaire set me on this path and now I realize how truly amazing this stuff really is. It is almost the perfect pairing! I love ice cream! I love ice cream sandwiches! Together, how can we go wrong?

Things like butter chicken + macaroni and cheese spring to mind. But this is neither here nor now. This is ice cream. Serious business.

True story: I wanted to write that in lolcats but didn’t know the best way. So I found a lolcat translator! No joke. Their translation was “serious busines.” Also no joke.

So today, I will show you how I went about making this.

First, I started with my very very favorite vanilla ice cream recipe as a base. Even Breyers Natural Vanilla, my first love, doesn’t hold a candle to the flavor (and, most likely, fat) packed in this.

Instead of vanilla extract, though, I added this:

It has real vanilla beans flecks and packs a nice, extra vanilla-y punch with the ease and cost of using plain ol’ extract rather over buying vanilla beans. It has a thick consistency. One might almost call it paste-y.

I know, I’m not that funny. So let’s move on.

Do you see all the flecks? I do love vanilla bean flecks in my ice cream. Reminds me of childhood.

Then I chilled the custard overnight and churned it up nice and pretty in my ice cream mixer. While I let Martin wrestle with scooping out the ice cream, I focused on a more important task:

I used my dough cutter to create straight lines that didn’t mush the sandwich too much. Then I started our reliable layer effect: a layer of ice cream, a nice layer of topping, wash, rinse, repeat. This time around, I think we used around 4 - 6 sandwiches (can’t remember the exact total). I thought there should be more, but Martin said no. He also physically blocked me from adding more. However, after tasting it, he agreed that we should have added more (HA!) to create a better “ice cream sandwich” feel.

I love the soft chocolate cookie-ness of the ice cream sandwiches in this ice cream. I also like the small pockets of ice-cream-sandwich ice cream. They’re white rather than a light yellow and have almost the effect of whipped cream in comparison to the richness of my base ice cream.

Martin still prefers the cookie dough to this one, but I know I will keep this one in steady rotation. This is one big carton of delicious, I’d say.

Cookie Dough Ice Cream

Awhile ago, I made Cookie Dough Ice Cream. I feel that this one is worthy of capital letters, because this was the mother of all ice creams I had made up until that point and ever since.

Cookie dough is Martin’s very favorite flavor, despite my insistence that it be mint chocolate chip (and believe me, I tried!). Martin says this even surpasses the much loved Ben and Jerry’s Oatmeal Cookie Chunk!

I used my trusty French Vanilla Ice Cream as a base and then made my very favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies. As I was envisioning the beautiful blending of two of my favorite recipes, I was both excited by how yummy I hoped it would taste and dreading how much I’d have to run to work off the calories.

I made the cookie dough and froze it briefly. Then I chipped it apart into small chunks and froze it some more. When I made the ice cream, I followed a suggestion out of all the ice cream books I’d been researching: layering yummy mix-ins with ice cream will create a more consistent ice cream. And it worked - it was definitely more uniform than the glob of brownies we found in the center of our last mixed ice cream, Brownie Ice Cream.

The result: Martin pretty much spasmed in joy and almost had a heart attack after the first bite. The amount of fat in this makes this reaction unsurprising, but I like to think he will at least die happy if that’s ever the case.

Layers: they do more than keep you warm in the winter!

Nutella Ice Cream

In all the hubbub, I forgot that I recently decided to make Chocolate and Zucchini’s Nutella Ice Cream. I figured I had to, when both Amy and Tommy linked me to it. Plus, the fact that the recipe has just two ingredients that I happened to have on hand was like a sign - it was practically begging, “Make me now!”

Like Amy, I am a huge fan of Clotilde, the food she makes and her writing style. Amy has successfully tried her chocolate zucchini cake but even though I faithfully bought zucchinis at the Farmer’s Market last summer with that hope in mind, the opportunity never presented itself. So this is my very first Clotilde recipe and I am pretty excited by that.

In her recipe, she suggests using a different chocolate hazelnut spread rather than Nutella, because the original Nutella recipe has changed to include goodness knows what kind of scary weird preservative-y things. Martin and I actually had lots of Nutella - and I mean LOTS, we bought it at Costco last summer. One Costco-Nutella container was the size of 2.5 normal Nutella containers. I’d made my self-frosted cupcakes with one container of Nutella and I still had the other container (they came in sets of 2). I decided to use it for this recipe.

I combined the two ingredients together and put a little elbow grease behind my whisk and kind of stirred / pushed at the Nutella clump until it was blended with the evaporated milk. This took awhile but I enjoyed watching the two very separate ingredients slowly become a smooth, homogeneous mixture. But I AM weird like that.

The only way I differed on her recipe is that I did equal parts cup measurements milk and Nutella, more for ease of measurement than anything else. After chilling it overnight, I put it in my ice cream maker and let it churn. The results were very creamy and VERY Nutella-y. I gifted this to Greg and Kjersti, because I knew one of Kjersti’s favorite gelato flavors at our local gelato place was his Caramello Crunch, which basically tastes like Nutella ice cream with random crunchies. However, before I did, I cheated and snuck a little bite - all in the interest of making sure I was giving them something edible. That’s my story and I’m stickig to it.

Out of all the ice creams I have made, I think my favorite (and Martin’s by a mile) is still Cookie Dough but this one was great as well, especially if you are a Nutella fan. Next time, I am thinking of making my own “Nutella” so I can control the ingredients that go in. We’ll see how that goes!

Nutella Ice Cream

2 (12 oz.) cans unsweetened evaporated milk (this is approx. 3 cups)
3 cups Nutella

1- Mix together two ingredients until smoothly blended.

2- Let chill overnight.

3- Place in ice cream maker and let churn until desired consistency is reached. Scoop into container and place in freezer to harden slightly. Serve.

Servings: A lot

Brownie Ice Cream

There’s no photo for this but you might thank me for that - vanilla ice cream irregularly studded with giant chunks of brownie really just looks like the side of a cow. But tastier.

The more I think about that last sentence, the more I realize how very bad of an analogy that was. So let’s move on.

I once read that Ben and Jerry (of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream - is there really any other combination?) differed in ice cream technique, one liking big chunks sparsely integrated into the ice cream and the other liking smaller chunks consistently throughout. What kind of ice creamer are you?

I think I vote for smaller chunks consistently throughout. I made up this batch of vanilla ice cream to use up the batch of brownies that I made for Movie Night and which no one ate! So I had a lot of brownies leftover and no desire for them to go to waste.

As the base, I used the French Vanilla ice cream I’d already tried making before. I underestimated the amount of ice cream I was making and only broke up about 3 - 4 large brownies into small chunks. That was actually pretty hard, as the brownies were relatively moist and clung desperately together. After the ice cream was finished churning, I scooped the ice cream into my Tupperware and dumped in the brownie pieces, giving it a quick stir. That’s when I realized that 3 - 4 large brownies into small chunks gets you NOWHERE.

I was worried about the ice cream melting and getting that unpleasant “ice cream-melted” texture so I quickly broke up the remaining brownies into large chunks that would not have passed my previous quality control. I think that contributed to the overall texture, which was “uneven.” I need to learn how to stir the ingredients in evenly, as they seem to be focused mostly towards the center, with brownie-crumb flecked vanilla on the outside.

Martin says I am just a couple of steps closer to recreating our all-time favorite Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. That’s right - three cheers for Oatmeal Cookie Chunk! I’m still trying to think how I’d do this - I know Oatmeal Cookie Chunk is a sweet cream ice cream with small chocolate chip pieces (but not in the familiar Nestle baking chip format) with smooth chunks of oatmeal cookie that somehow tastes uncooked. I have been toying with the idea of mixing up some oatmeal cookie batter (without eggs or baking soda, since there would be no need to bake them) and mixing that in when it is super soft.

Anyone out there an ice cream expert who can help me along?

French Vanilla Ice Cream

OMG, this is happiness in a cup! Happy happy happines! I think it might have to do with the 4 cups of cream. Something with that much fat can’t possibly taste bad.

Actually, I take that back. I’m sure there’s a way. But if given a choice, I wouldn’t eat those fats.

This was my first attempt at making ice cream and I was a little nervous. I had a shiny, frozen-solid ice cream maker sitting in my freezer and a nice custard in my refrigerator. I also had read the reviews on the KitchenAid ice cream maker many times, to make sure I knew general Do’s and Do Not’s from people who had used the ice cream maker before.

I set up the bowl into my KitchenAid, started a-churnin’ and then poured in the batter. Many recipes had noted to use a spouted container. I did not and instead made a nice mess all over my kitchen counter. Fun!

After that, I sat and stared at the ice cream maker churning. And stared some more. I’ve never used one before so I was all sorts of curious as to how this worked. I was also a little apprehensive. What if my ice cream maker wasn’t completely frozen? What if the custard didn’t become yummy and soft serve-y?

I am such a worry-wart.

It came out fantastic. So creamy and full of flavor and somewhat soft, just the way I like my ice cream! It tasted almost as good as Goodberry’s and that’s saying a LOT!

So here is the recipe for French Vanilla ice cream. Feel free to make it or come on over and enjoy it with me. I took the original and just scaled it back by 25%. Ironically, many reviews of the ice cream maker noted that the recipes that come with the instruction manual overflow the container. Guh!

I’m trying out a chocolate recipe next that I hope will be pretty tasty!

French Vanilla Ice Cream

1-⅞ cups half-and-half
6 egg yolks
¾ cup sugar
1-⅞ cups whipping cream
3 tsp. vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

NOTE: This recipe is perfect for the 2-quart capacity of a KitchenAid ice cream maker.

1- In a medium saucepan over medium heat, heat half-and-half until very hot, but not boiling, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and set aside.

2- In a mixing bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar.

3- Very gradually, whipping all the while, add half-and-half and mix until blended.

4- Return half-and-half mixture to saucepan and cook over medium heat until small bubbles form around edge and mixture is steamy, stirring constantly. Do not boil.

5- Transfer half-and-half mixture into large bowl. Stir in whipping cream, vanilla and salt.

6- Cover and chill thoroughly, at least 8 hours.

7- Assemble ice cream maker according to directions. Start up ice cream maker and add mixture slowly. Churn until thick, soft-serve consistency is reached.

8- Remove from ice cream maker. Either freeze for further “ripening” or serve immediately.

Servings: A lot!