Hey Ice Cream Club! We’re officially in the last month of Summer now, and for me, that means trying to pack in every moment of sunshine that I can before the weather changes. We’ve had some much-needed rain this week, but it really cools things down and dampens my enthusiasm for making ice cream.
But I still made a few batches, mostly the tail end of my Ruby chocolate supply. The scoops pictured above are the Ruby ice cream. Not so pink. I don’t know if I just didn’t use enough, or if the colour isn’t going to survive being melted and combined with egg yolks and dairy. The yolks especially give it a bit of a yellow colour, which can throw off the pink. I will be getting more Ruby chocolate to experiment with, and I’m going to up the amount I use considerably. I’m also planning to do a vanilla base with Ruby chocolate chunks in it, to really show off what the flavour is like.
I’m hoping to get another foraging trip in, but I’m not optimistic. Unless we get another hot stretch, the berries I pick are likely done for the season. I got a hot tip about some wild strawberries for next summer, though I’m going to try and be more diligent about getting fresh fruit overall. I always feel like I’ve missed out if I get to the end of summer and haven’t gorged on fruit. And recently, turned tons of it into ice creams and sorbets.
The end of summer can be a great opportunity for some really cool ice cream flavours. In previous years, I’ve done pumpkin, apple, and even corn flavoured ice creams. For the pumpkin, I roasted and processed a sweet little sugar pumpkin, though the ice cream was a little fibrous. The spice blend really makes all the difference. Cinnamon, nutmeg, and maybe a touch of cloves are what make pumpkin pies, ice creams and spiced lattes so great. If you’re serving pumpkin pie, a cinnamon and nutmeg spiked vanilla ice cream would be super nice. And some maple syrup poured over top, bourbon optional.
Apple ice creams use a similar spice blend to pumpkin, but it plays a more supporting role. Apples (and pears) have a high water content, and tend to freeze weird. I’ve found cooking them down in caramel in very small pieces to be an okay way to do things, but really processing them down into a jam, apple butter, or even a syrup is probably best. While it may also be tempting to add homemade pie crust bits to an apple ice cream, which I’ve done, I find store-bought vanilla cookies work pretty well, and might hold up better to the ice cream’s moisture content. Depending on cookies/crust, of course. But light and flaky are desirable qualities in pie crust, but are almost impossible to replicate in crust that’s buried deep in frozen dairy.
Corn ice creams have been some of my greatest successes. I had a recent Thanksgiving with pumpkin pie and corn ice cream, and it was to die for. I tried a few different methods, eventually settling on a ‘candy corn’ recipe, using toffee candy bits to add both a sugary pop and some crunch. The freezer life of the crunch is pretty minimal, unfortunately, but if you eat all the ice cream right away, it hardly matters. You can always just sprinkle them on top, too.
Corn ice cream was made by steeping fresh corn in my milk mixture. I sliced the kernels off the cob and then added them and the juice to milk and let it sit overnight. The flavour was really nice. Subtle, but obviously corny. The natural starch in the corn also added a smoothness to the ice cream that was excellent.
I plan to try out a few mixes in the coming weeks, including some more corn ice cream. But first, some of the backlog needs to clear. My freezer is pretty full. Too much ice cream on hand is a pretty good problem to have, but it’s also a good thing for the home-ice-cream-maker to consider, among the overall ebb and flow of making ice cream.
If you have a small machine like mine, you are probably already familiar with the timing required, including freezing your freezer bowl properly and letting your mixes cool overnight. Ice cream on demand is easy to do, but does require a bit of setup. It’s a bit of a rhythm. So too is keeping up the pace of experimentation. Sometimes the freezer fills up, and sometimes you forget to freeze the bowl, and sometimes it’s just cold and dreary out, and nobody wants to eat too much ice cream.
I guess that’s just the balance for all the weeks of intense heat and high demand, when I can’t seem to keep any ice cream around, or taste all the flavours I make. For all the ice cream businesses, a cold week at the end of the summer has got to feel like the touch of winter, even in August.
Most of the ice cream enthusiasts I know would have some on the coldest day of the year, so even while production is probably winding down, it is certainly not winding up. There is still most of a full month of summer, and the beginnings of an autumn season of corn, apples, pumpkins and other fun bases for ice cream. I hope you get some of those last droplets of sunshine yourself, preferably while face-deep in a sundae, cone or banana split. Thanks for reading!
The Ice Cream Club 