For reasons that seemed to make sense at the time, I'm the proud owner of three ice cream makers. (Two Cuisinart and a Krupps. The Cuisinart ones are nicer, FWIW) And we've got a freezer that keeps things nicely sub-arctic and'll drop the chilling containers to a useable temperature in about six hours. And a bunch of us are getting together on Monday for a picnic. That means... ice cream!
So, besides the standards (vanilla, chocolate, mint chocolate chip, cocoanut, and lemon sorbet (don't use straight lemon juice for that. It's a bit... tart)) I've been fiddling some. I mean, why not? The ingredients are cheap, so it's only a matter of time, and with three chillers time's no big deal either. What I've found is that key lime pie comes through again.
The filling does, at least. Not a big surprise, since the filling for a key lime pie's just a lime custard, and a dead-simple one at that. I've used this stuff out-of-pie before (it makes a really nice filling between layers of a white chocolate case) but never frozen. It's about time--frozen custard's darned good. Mix it up, throw it into a 300 degree oven for fifteen or twenty minutes (use a shallow dish and make sure the edges are clean or you'll have burned custard. Ick), cool it down, then freeze. Mmmm! Frozen lime custard.
It works well with lemon and orange as well as lime, too. Dunno how grapefruit works, though I'm not inclined to try. I think I'm going to give it a shot with pineapple and raspberry, at some point. The nice thing about this is that even if you might not get a really good custard texture in a pie (because something in the fruit retards gelling, or you need so much fruit juice that the mix is too watery to gel when refrigerated) it doesn't make that much difference, since you're going to be freezing the stuff anyway, and cold generally wins.
The basic custard recipe, for the interested, is simple. One 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk, two egg yolks, and 3/4 cup of lime, lemon, or orange juice. Mix up, bake in a shallow pan at 300 degrees for 15-20 minutes, and you're set. (The pan should be shallow, like a pie or cake pan, otherwise the custard in the center won't be properly cooked by the time the outside starts to burn) From there it's good for all sorts of stuff.
Might even make a good mix-in for a buttercream frosting. I'll have to try that at some point...
Posted by Dan at September 5, 2004 03:33 PM | TrackBack (0)We recently made peach ice cream, with real chunks of fresh sliced peaches. It was *good*. We used a recipe from the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Cookbook. Yum. Highly recommended.
Posted by: Peter at September 5, 2004 04:29 PMAt the Minnesota State fair (and earlier at the Taste of Minnesota) I discovered the idea of Keylime Pie on a Stick. Basically a frozen slice of keylime pie (with crust) frozen and dipped in chocolate.
It was also a proper orangy color for the pie too.
Posted by: Chris at September 6, 2004 04:37 AMVanilla + lots of crystallised ginger. Yummy.
Posted by: Adrian Howard at September 6, 2004 03:31 PMIf you are playing around with icecream makers then Harold McGee's "The Curious Cook" is a must read. He has an excellent formula for getting the sugar/water mix right for various types of frozen desets and then provides a massive table of the sugar content of different ingredients. Totally geeky.
His "On Food and Cooking" is a must read for any geek in the kitchen. "The Curious Cook" is more of an addendum addressing questions that people asked him and addressing a few other things that he thought of. Of the two "On Food and Cooking" is indispensable. But both are fun.
-ben
Posted by: Ben Bennett at September 7, 2004 10:44 AM