Sweet Corn Ice Cream
This is one of those times when you just need to trust me. Ice cream flavored with sweet corn might sound odd to you, but it is really quite tasty. The corn flavor actually works very well when added to traditional ice cream ingredients like cream, sugar and eggs.
What a fun dessert to make for your next summer barbecue. You can even let people taste it to see if they can guess the secret ingredient!
I had heard of ice cream being made with corn before, but only tasted it recently. A cousin of mine made some and I was lucky enough to try it. It was really good. Corn ice cream is popular in Mexico, at least that is what I read.
I decided to make some of my own. It was perfect timing. I had some cream and half and half that needed to be used soon. I also had 2 ears of corn in the fridge. You can just cut the corn from the cob and add it to the recipe. That will leave you with kernels of corn in the finished ice cream. Nothing wrong with that. I pureed the corn mixture, because I wanted a smoother finished ice cream. Either is fine, based on your preference. I used 2 ears of corn- that was all I had. I could see adding another ear of corn for a more corny flavor. Frozen corn could also have been used.
Sweet Corn Ice Cream
2 ears sweet corn
1½ c. half and half
1 c. heavy whipping cream
¾ c. sugar- or a little more or less, to taste
4 egg yolks
1 t. vanilla
Scrape the corn kernels off the cobs and place in a medium saucepan. Add the half and half and the cream and bring to a simmer. You can leave the kernels as is, or puree the mixture at this point. I wanted a smoother ice cream, so I used my immersion blender to puree the corn in the pot. In a medium bowl, beat together the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla. Add ½ cup of the hot cream mixture to the eggs, whisking in well. Add another ½ cup of the cream mixture, whisking again. Add one last ½ cup of the hot cream and again, whisk until smooth. Pour the egg mixture into the saucepan with the cream and while whisking, simmer until mixture starts to thicken and will coat the back of a spoon. This will take about 5 minutes. Don’t use too high a heat, or you will scramble your eggs. Mixture should reach 160 degrees to be sure eggs are cooked. Remove from heat and pour mixture into a bowl. Allow ice cream base to cool down, then chill in fridge. Chilled mixture can be frozen in an ice cream maker once cold- in a few hours- or even the next day. Once mixture has been frozen in ice cream maker, place in a container and freeze until ready to serve. Makes about 5-6 cups of ice cream.
Peach Ice Cream- Recipe #2
Yesterday I posted my peach ice cream recipe, using a custard ( egg ) base. Today, I thought I would post another recipe for peach ice cream, since I mentioned it in the post. In this recipe, only the peaches are cooked, to soften them up before freezing. The rest of the base is not. This recipe contains no eggs. The texture is lovely, but different from an egg-based ice cream. The color is different, too. I just thought it would be nice to give you a couple of options.
Peaches are one of those fruits that make me think summer. We had a couple of peach trees in the backyard when I was growing up. I remember one year, my dad had to prop up the branches so they wouldn’t break under the weight of all those peaches. Homemade ice cream is all about summer, too. Fruit-studded ice cream seems like the perfect dessert for a warm summer day.
When using peaches in ice cream, you don’t want to just cut up the fruit and drop it in. If you do that, the peaches will form ice crystals and become quite hard, sort of like peachy ice cubes. Nobody want that in their ice cream. Better to cook the peaches first, like I did for the peaches in this recipe. That way, when you put them in the ice cream, they get frozen, but in a softer way. True of other fruits you might add to any ice cream recipe.
Homemade Peach Ice Cream
3-4 ripe peaches
2 c. half and half
1 c. sugar, or to taste
1 T. vanilla
1 T. orange zest
Peel and dice peaches. Cook in a small amount of water and a little sugar until tender. If you don’t precook the peaches they will be icy and hard in the ice cream. Cool and drain. In bowl combine half and half and sugar and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add remaining ingredients and stir well. Place in ice cream machine and process according to manufacturer’s directions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker place mixture in a shallow pan and freeze solid. Remove from freezer and allow to soften a little at room temperature then break up into chunks and place in a mixing bowl. Beat with a mixer until smooth and return to freezer. You can also process in a food processor. Makes 1 quart.
Joe’s Soda Bread Ice Cream
This ice cream happened because friend saw a recipe for an ice cream made with brown bread. He thought it might be fun to make it with Irish soda bread, for St. Patrick’s Day. It worked out really well. When I first added the bread to the ice cream, I tasted it and thought it was good, but needed something more. I had already made the butterscotch sauce to serve with it, so I added a little and the end result was a really fun and different ice cream. The ice cream actually tasted a lot like butter pecan. I served it to a friend the other night and she loved it.
This would be a fun dessert for St. Patrick’s day, or any day really, and it was super easy to make. Thanks, Joe, for the inspiration.
So here is the recipe. I have also included the recipes for the bread and the butterscotch sauce, although, you can buy them already made.
Joe’s Soda Bread Ice Cream
1 ½ qts. Vanilla ice cream
4 cups crumbled soda bread*
½ cup butterscotch sauce**
Soften ice cream and fold in the soda bread and butterscotch sauce. Return to freezer to firm up before serving.
* You can just buy a soda bread or use the recipe below
** I made my own butterscotch sauce, then had extra for serving. Feel free to just buy a jar if you don’t want to make your own. Serve some sauce, warmed with the ice cream to drizzle over.
Irish Soda Bread
2 c. flour
½ t. each baking powder and baking soda
¼ t. salt
2 T. butter
¾ c. raisins, currants or golden raisins, optional, I used golden raisins
2 t. caraway seeds
1 egg, beaten
1 c. buttermilk
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Dust a baking sheet with a little flour. Combine dry ingredients in bowl and cut in butter to resemble coarse crumbs. Add raisins and caraway seeds. Combine egg and milk and set 2 tablespoons of this mixture aside. Add remaining milk mixture to flour mixture and combine just until dough forms into a ball. Place on baking sheet, brush with reserved egg mixture and cut a crisscross on top of loaf. Bake about 25 minutes or until bread sounds hollow. Makes 1.
Butterscotch Sauce
6 T. butter
½ c. half and half
½ c. brown sugar
1 t. molasses*
½ -1 teaspoon salt
1 t. vanilla
Melt butter in a heavy bottomed pan. Add remaining ingredients, except vanilla, to the pan. Stir to mix well, then bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla. Sauce will thicken as it cools. Store in fridge and warm a little before using. Makes about a cup of sauce. Keeps for weeks in the fridge, but you’ll eat it long before that.
*The addition of a little molasses was because my original recipe called for dark brown sugar. I only had light brown sugar. I liked the flavor that extra molasses added to the finished sauce. Feel free to omit the extra molasses, or add a pinch more, depending on how dark you want your finished sauce.
Peach Ice Cream – Recipe #2
Yesterday I posted my peach ice cream recipe, using a custard ( egg ) base. Today, I thought I would post another recipe for peach ice cream, since I mentioned it in the post. In this recipe, only the peaches are cooked, to soften them up before freezing. The rest of the base is not. This recipe contains no eggs. The texture is lovely, but different from an egg-based ice cream. The color is different, too. I just thought it would be nice to give you a couple of options.
Peaches are one of those fruits that make me think summer. We had a couple of peach trees in the backyard when I was growing up. I remember one year, my dad had to prop up the branches so they wouldn’t break under the weight of all those peaches. Homemade ice cream is all about summer, too. Fruit-studded ice cream seems like the perfect dessert for a warm summer day.
When using peaches in ice cream, you don’t want to just cut up the fruit and drop it in. If you do that, the peaches will form ice crystals and become quite hard, sort of like peachy ice cubes. Nobody want that in their ice cream. Better to cook the peaches first, like I did for the peaches in this recipe. That way, when you put them in the ice cream, they get frozen, but in a softer way. True of other fruits you might add to any ice cream recipe.
Homemade Peach Ice Cream
3-4 ripe peaches
2 c. half and half
1 c. sugar, or to taste
1 T. vanilla
1 T. orange zest
Peel and dice peaches. Cook in a small amount of water and a little sugar until tender. If you don’t precook the peaches they will be icy and hard in the ice cream. Cool and drain. In bowl combine half and half and sugar and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add remaining ingredients and stir well. Place in ice cream machine and process according to manufacturer’s directions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker place mixture in a shallow pan and freeze solid. Remove from freezer and allow to soften a little at room temperature then break up into chunks and place in a mixing bowl. Beat with a mixer until smooth and return to freezer. You can also process in a food processor. Makes 1 quart.
Soda Bread Ice Cream
This ice cream happened because friend saw a recipe for an ice cream made with brown bread. He thought it might be fun to make it with Irish soda bread, for St. Patrick’s Day. It worked out really well. When I first added the bread to the ice cream, I tasted it and thought it was good, but needed something more. I had already made the butterscotch sauce to serve with it, so I added a little and the end result was a really fun and different ice cream. The ice cream actually tasted a lot like butter pecan. I served it to a group of friends and family the other night and they loved it.
This would be a fun dessert for St. Patrick’s day, or any day really, and it was super easy to make. Thanks, Joe, for the inspiration.
So here is the recipe. I have also included the recipes for the bread and the butterscotch sauce, although, you can buy them already made.
Joe’s Soda Bread Ice Cream
1 ½ qts. Vanilla ice cream
4 cups crumbled soda bread*
½ cup butterscotch sauce**
Soften ice cream and fold in the soda bread and butterscotch sauce. Return to freezer to firm up before serving.
* You can just buy a soda bread or use the recipe below
** I made my own butterscotch sauce, then had extra for serving. Feel free to just buy a jar if you don’t want to make your own. Serve some sauce, warmed with the ice cream to drizzle over.
Irish Soda Bread
2 c. flour
½ t. each baking powder and baking soda
¼ t. salt
2 T. butter
¾ c. raisins, currants or golden raisins, optional, I used golden raisins
2 t. caraway seeds
1 egg, beaten
1 c. buttermilk
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Dust a baking sheet with a little flour. Combine dry ingredients in bowl and cut in butter to resemble coarse crumbs. Add raisins and caraway seeds. Combine egg and milk and set 2 tablespoons of this mixture aside. Add remaining milk mixture to flour mixture and combine just until dough forms into a ball. Place on baking sheet, brush with reserved egg mixture and cut a crisscross on top of loaf. Bake about 25 minutes or until bread sounds hollow. Makes 1.
Butterscotch Sauce
6 T. butter
½ c. half and half
½ c. brown sugar
1 t. molasses*
½ -1 teaspoon salt
1 t. vanilla
Melt butter in a heavy bottomed pan. Add remaining ingredients, except vanilla, to the pan. Stir to mix well, then bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla. Sauce will thicken as it cools. Store in fridge and warm a little before using. Makes about a cup of sauce. Keeps for weeks in the fridge, but you’ll eat it long before that.
*The addition of a little molasses was because my original recipe called for dark brown sugar. I only had light brown sugar. I liked the flavor that extra molasses added to the finished sauce. Feel free to omit the extra molasses, or add a pinch more, depending on how dark you want your finished sauce.
Homemade Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Mint chocolate chip ice cream is a favorite of mine. I have tried a lot of mint chocolate chip ice cream, but was not always happy.
The tricky part is getting chips that aren’t hard chunks, but rather, little flecks of chocolate, that melt on your tongue when you eat the ice cream. In the past, for chocolate chip ice cream, I have brushed melted chocolate in thin sheets, chilled it, and then broken it into tiny pieces. It worked, but kind of a pain to do.
I tried something different this time, and with a few adjustments, it worked out great. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a recipe for homemade chocolate magic shell. You remember magic shell, the chocolate syrup that hardens when you drizzle it on ice cream. The recipe is quite simple. Chocolate, coconut oil and powdered sugar, melted together. It remains a liquid at room temperature. So, to create the “chips”, I just added some of the magic shell to the ice cream as it froze in the ice cream maker.
After a little playing around, I got the knack of drizzling it slowly. The end result, little flecks of chocolate through the ice cream that were tender and melted as you ate the ice cream. We had the ice cream served on a homemade brownie, then topped with more magic shell and some whipped cream. You will note that my “mint” ice cream is not green. I opted to omit food coloring, but feel free to add some, if you prefer.
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
2 c. half and half
1 c. whipping cream
½ c. sugar, or to taste*
2 t. mint extract
1 t. vanilla extract
About ½ c. magic shell- recipe follows
Combine half and half, cream, sugar and flavorings. Stir until sugar dissolves. Add more sugar, if needed, to suit your taste. Place mixture in an ice cream maker and start freezing it. Once it starts to thicken, drizzle the magic shell in slowly as the machine is running, to create little flecks of chocolate throughout the ice cream. I have to guess that I used about ½ a cup. Add until you have the amount of chips you like. Once ice cream forms, place in freezer until ready to serve. Makes about a quart.
*The mixture might taste a little sweet to you, but when you freeze it, it will taste less sweet. When making ice cream, the base should be a little”too” sweet to allow for the taste change after freezing.
Homemade Chocolate Shell
1 c. chocolate chips- I used dark chocolate chips
3/4 c. coconut oil- I used the unrefined
1/2 c. powdered sugar
Heat all together until melted. I melted mine in a microwave for 1 minute, but you could also melt over a double boiler. Stir until smooth. Store at room temp. To use, drizzle over ice cream, wait about 10-20 seconds- and it will harden.
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
A few days ago, a friend mentioned that part of a wonderful day, was having mint chocolate chop ice cream. I had to admit that mint chocolate chip ice cream is a favorite of mine, too. I decided to make some, as part of the dessert for a dinner with friends. The tricky part is getting chips that aren’t hard chunks, but rather, little flecks of chocolate, that melt on your tongue when you eat the ice cream. In the past, for chocolate chip ice cream, I have brushed melted chocolate in thin sheets, chilled it, and then broken it into tiny pieces. It worked, but a little tricky to do.
I tried something different this time, and with a few adjustments, it worked out great. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a recipe for homemade chocolate magic shell. You remember magic shell, the chocolate syrup that hardens when you drizzle it on ice cream. The recipe is quite simple. Chocolate, coconut oil and powdered sugar, melted together. It remains a liquid at room temperature. So, to create the “chips”, I just added some of the magic shell to the ice cream as it froze in the ice cream maker. After a little playing around, I got the knack of drizzling it slowly. The end result, little flecks of chocolate through the ice cream that were tender and melted as you ate the ice cream. We had the ice cream served on a homemade brownie, then topped with more magic shell and some whipped cream. You will note that my ice cream is not green. I opted to omit food coloring, but feel free to add some, if you prefer.
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
2 c. half and half
1 c. whipping cream
½ c. sugar, or to taste*
2 t. mint extract
1 t. vanilla extract
About ½ c. magic shell- recipe follows
Combine half and half, cream, sugar and flavorings. Stir until sugar dissolves. Add more sugar, if needed, to suit your taste. Place mixture in an ice cream maker and start freezing it. Once it starts to thicken, drizzle the magic shell in slowly as the machine is running, to create little flecks of chocolate throughout the ice cream. I have to guess that I used about ½ a cup. Add until you have the amount of chips you like. Once ice cream forms, place in freezer until ready to serve. Makes about a quart.
*The mixture might taste a little sweet to you, but when you freeze it, it will taste less sweet. When making ice cream, the base should be a little”too” sweet to allow for the taste change after freezing.
Homemade Chocolate Shell
1 c. chocolate chips- I used dark chocolate chips
3/4 c. coconut oil- I used the unrefined
1/2 c. powdered sugar
Heat all together until melted. I melted mine in a microwave for 1 minute, but you could also melt over a double boiler. Stir until smooth. Store at room temp. To use, drizzle over ice cream, wait about 10-20 seconds- and it will harden.
Strawberry and Lavender Ice Cream
Strawberry and Lavender Ice Cream
I make a lot of homemade ice cream and sorbet this time of year. I am always looking to add a new flavor, to change things up a little. I add herbs and spices to other dishes, so why not ice cream? If you are looking for a slightly different ice cream flavor you might think about spicing it up. I added lavender blossoms to my strawberry ice cream and ended up with a truly wonderful confection. You can get creative and add other seasonings to make your homemade ice cream special. Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, basil, lemon peel, pepper and other spices and herbs can all add interest to your frozen desserts. Open your mind up to experimenting and see what you can come up with. I made this the other day and wanted to share the recipe with you. Can’t wait to make it again.
Strawberry and Lavender Ice Cream
2 c. chopped strawberries
1 c. sugar
1 T. lavender blossoms
1 T. vanilla
2 c. cream or half and half or a combination. You can also use some milk or even almond or rice milk.
Additional sugar to taste
Place strawberries, lavender, vanilla and sugar in saucepan and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and chill. Combine chilled berry mixture with cream. Add additional sugar if you like. Remember that once it is frozen the ice cream will not taste as sweet so make this mixture a little sweeter than you want the final product to be. How much sugar you add varies with personal taste and how sweet the berries are. Place in an ice cream maker and process according to manufacturer’s directions. Once finished put in an sir- tight container and place in freezer. Makes about 1 quart.
Homemade Peach Ice Cream
Homemade Peach Ice Cream
I love peaches. For me, peaches always mean summer. It is too early for local peaches around here, but I found some at a produce market recently. They were nearly ripe already, so I put them in a brown paper bag to help them finish ripening. A few days later, I have a bunch of super tasty, juicy peaches. Since it is going to be unseasonably warm for the next week, I decided to use some to make ice cream. I added some vanilla and orange zest for some extra flavor- but mostly just plenty of peaches.
Homemade Peach Ice Cream
3-4 ripe peaches
2 c. half and half
1 c. sugar, or to taste
1 T. vanilla
1 T. orange zest
Peel and dice peaches. Cook in a small amount of water and a little sugar until tender. If you don’t precook the peaches they will be icy and hard in the ice cream. Cool and drain. In bowl combine half and half and sugar and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add remaining ingredients and stir well. Place in ice cream machine and process according to manufacturer’s directions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker place mixture in a shallow pan and freeze solid. Remove from freezer and allow to soften a little at room temperature then break up into chunks and place in a mixing bowl. Beat with a mixer until smooth and return to freezer. Makes 1 quart.
