Bourbon apple pie ice cream

I tried to find an actual recipe for Bourbon Apple Pie Ice Cream, but I didn't, so I had to do some searching to find recipes I liked the sound of and could combine. Ultimately, I used this recipe as the base and made some minor adjustments, below.

5/8 c. sugar
1/8 c. flour
1/8 tsp. salt
2 c. milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
2 c. heavy whipping cream
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 can apple pie filling, chopped (or fresh peeled, cored, seeded and chopped apples sauteed with butter, sugar, and cinnamon for 10 min. in a skillet) -- you can see why I used the canned stuff!
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 tbsp. bourbon
1/2 c. crushed cookies

In large saucepan, combine sugar, flour, and salt and gradually stir in milk. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes until thickened.

Whisk a small amount of the hot mixture into the eggs, then return all to the pan, whisking constantly. Cook and stir over low heat until mixture reaches 160 degrees and coats the back of a metal spoon.

Remove from heat. Cool by placing pan in a bowl of ice water and stir for 2 minutes.

Stir in whipping cream and vanilla; add pie filling, cinnamon, and bourbon. Press plastic wrap onto surface of custard and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Put in ice cream maker and follow manufacturer's instructions. In the last 5 minutes of mixing, add the crushed cookies. Freeze before serving.


In ice water bath


Chopped apple pie filling--you can see my choice of cookie to crush


Mixture before refrigeration


Mixing it up--overflow!

I had to remove about 1/2 cup of the mixture from the machine because it was too full. Even after taking some out, after the mixing was done, it was way too full and it was difficult to get the cookie crumbs mixed in.

I put the "raw" ice cream into mini containers for easy freezing, but it was difficult to close the containers with the soft mixture in it. Next time, I will freeze the whole "raw" batch and then apportion the ice cream into smaller containers for giving away. I'll update this with feedback from my unsuspecting friends.

Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!

Avocado ice cream

Well, I forgot to take pictures until I was past the pureeing point. But you will see some images below. Keep in mind that this is a foodie blog, not a photography blog.

I adapted the recipe from the book to make a smaller batch and use fresh ingredients:

2 fresh, ripe avocados
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup sugar

Dissolve sugar in milk over low heat. Cool in fridge.
In blender, puree avocado flesh with cream, add milk/sugar mixture.
Chill puree mixture in fridge.
When cold, add puree mixture to ice cream machine and operate as usual.

In theory, this recipe should make 1 quart, but I think it yields a little less. Which is fine with me, because I don't want to be responsible for eating a whole quart of ice cream.

(By the way, 1/2 cup of ice cream equals about 250 calories. A moderate, hour-long bike ride burns about 250 calories. So one cannot dive guilt-free into a microbrewed batch of homemade ice cream. I'm just sayin'. How many calories is it when you taste the puree, taste the mixed product, taste the frozen results, taste after transferring to storage container, lick the bowl and aerator clean, taste after freezing for 5 minutes, and so on?)

The avocado ice cream is delicious! It's creamy and sweet, but has a fruity taste. It tastes like sweet potatoes after you add butter and sugar and you blend until smooth--it's got that creamy sweet desserty taste that's reminiscent of the original item, but better.



After pureeing



In the mixer



After transferring frozen product to storage container

By the way, I just couldn't stand the taste of the fig ice cream after day two. Both Bike Guy and my friend Tim agreed that the fig ice cream paired well with homemade pumpkin pie, but it really wasn't good on its own. I let the remaining two quarts of ice cream soften overnight and got rid of it. I'll reiterate: full-fat milk and cream and fresh ingredients are the only way to get a premium product.

Next up, by special request: Bourbon Apple Pie Ice Cream

First batch

I got an ice cream maker, scoop, and recipe book* for my birthday from my mom. I had tried out this maker with my roommate this summer with excellent results, so I was confident that this one would work for me. The only problem is that my recipe book makes 2 quart recipes and my maker isn't big enough. I can't do the kind of math to reduce the recipes by 25%, so in the future, I may have to halve all the recipes.

So, I chose to make fig ice cream (recipe follows). Recently, I had the most amazing fig gelato at this place in Seattle. It was light pink in color, creamy, and tasted like fresh figs. This recipe called for dried figs (which was convenient, because fresh figs are not in season around here) which needed to be softened by cooking in water for a while. After cooking, the recipe said to blend until smooth. I followed all the steps but the blended figs were quite unappetizing. Unlike fresh figs, which are purply-peachy and pretty on the inside, dried figs are brown. Which meant, I realized after blending in the milk, cream, and sugar, the fig mix smelled and tasted more like prunes.

I have extra mix because I didn't realize ahead of time that my mixer is smaller than the recipe yield. I think I'm going to buy a bunch of mini disposable tupperware containers and try to give away the fig/prune ice cream to friends. Nothing wrong with dessert that makes you regular!

After about 20 minutes of mixing, the mix started to look more like ice cream, but was still brown. And tasted like prunes. After the recommended 25 minutes of mixing, I put the frozen mixture in the freezer. Hopefully it will magically turn into the fantastic gelato of my memory.**

I will post pictures in the future--it occurred to me well into the process that I should be documenting this visually. From now on!

Note: I used 2% instead of whole milk in an attempt to make a reduced-calorie dessert. In the future, I won't try this again. The calories saved don't make up for the runnier product. I'd rather have less ice cream and have a richer experience.

*I chose this book because of the number of recipes compared to other ice cream recipe books. Plus, the clincher was the recipe for peanut butter sauce. Yum. After trying this one recipe, though, I might recommend a book with pictures (to avoid any chocolate/prune color disappointment) and one with more careful testing and copyediting. (This recipe had a typo, corrected for you here, and lack of direction--cook until soft? How long? What temperature?)

**It did not.

Fig Ice Cream (from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homemade Ice Cream)
12 oz. dried figs
2 cups water
3/4 cup table sugar
3 cups milk
1 1/2 cups whipping cream

1. Place figs and water in heavy sauce pan and cook until very soft. Drain figs and save one cup of the cooking water.

2. Place soft figs in a blender. Add sugar and saved cooking water. Blend until smooth. You may have to add a little milk.

3. In a mixing bowl add fig mixture, remaining milk, whipping cream, and mix until smooth.

4. Cool mixture to 40degrees F in your refrigerator.

5. Transfer cold mixture to the ice cream freezer and follow manufacturer's guidelines.