Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

With summer finally setting in here in North Idaho, I thought some more ice cream was in order. This was a recipe that I really wanted to try the first time I went through this book, but I couldn’t find fresh mint. Well, I could find fresh mint, but it was quite expensive, so I planned ahead and planted my own.

I planted two different kinds of mint, Moroccan mint and some other kind (it was mint. It smelled minty. That was good enough for me.). The only reason I remember the name Moroccan mint was that it looked unlike all the other mint plants for sale, and it smelled sweeter than the regular mint.

This is the regular mint, all fat and happy in its pot.

This the Moroccan mint. It seems to be more viney than the regular mint.

This ice cream follows the same basic steps as most of her other ice creams. You boil milk, cream, sugar and corn syrup for a few minutes, whisk in a cornstarch slurry and bring the mixture back to a boil. Then you whisk in cream cheese, remove the pot from the heat and stir in a big handful of torn mint leaves. The ice cream base is cooled and left to seep for up to 12 hours. Right before churning the ice cream, you strain out the mint leaves.

After some back and forth, I decided to use the Moroccan mint in the ice cream. Also, that was the mint plant that was most in need of trimming. I ended up leaving the mint to seep for about 15 hours before I was able to churn it. I don’t know if that was the problem, but my ice cream turned out funky. And not in a good way.

The first thing I noticed, as I was getting ready to churn the ice cream, was that there wasn’t very much of it. It seemed to have condensed down much more than the other ice creams I’ve done out of this book, and as a consequence, the base was incredibly thick, so thick, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to strain it. So I stirred in some extra milk to thin it out before I strained it. As I started to churn the ice cream, I noticed that it wasn’t freezing very quickly. In fact, my canister ended up thawing completely before the ice cream was frozen. I had no choice but to get it out of the canister and into the freezer while it was still very soft. And even in the freezer, the ice cream never did freeze solidly.

And finally, the taste. It was very mintly grassy. We love mint and we love ice cream, so we ate it, but it definitely wasn’t my favorite ice cream. I think when you use mint extract, you don’t get the grassy, green taste you do with fresh mint leaves. Or maybe that was just the Moroccan mint.

And since I’ve shown you pictures of my mint plants (that was to cover up the fact that I didn’t take pictures of the ice cream), I thought I’d show you what my tomato plants look like. I like to call it the tomato jungle. There’s lots of leaves, some flowers, but no tomatoes yet.

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

I set the sourdough aside long enough to churn up another ice cream from this book. I wanted something other than chocolate, and brown butter and almonds sounded like a good choice.

You start off by browning a whole bunch of butter and separating the brown milk solids from the oil. To the milk solids you add whole milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup and salt (the clarified butter gets set aside to use elsewhere). This mixture is brought to a boil, and the corn starch slurry is added. Once the mixture thickens, cream cheese is whisked in, the ice cream is cooled, churned and layered with almond brittle and frozen.

Almond brittle you ask? Oh. My. God. Yes. This candy recipe blindsided me. I’m usually indifferent to brittle; I prefer toffee, but this stuff is magnificent. It’s crunchy, but crumbly enough that you don’t break a tooth biting it. It has a deep caramelized  flavor with just enough butter to soften the edges. And it is chock full of almonds. How good is that?

I say damn good.

Out of all the recipes I’ve tried so far out of this book, this is my least favorite. The ice cream is good, tasting exactly like you’d imagine a brown butter ice cream with almond brittle to taste. It’s just that the ice cream is sort of timid. It doesn’t blow you away with flavor like some of the other ice creams. I think this ice cream would be great served as an accompaniment to something else, maybe an apple pie or a peach crisp, but I wouldn’t make it again to eat by itself.

Except for that almond brittle.

One other note: In the book, the picture of the ice cream shows an ice cream that is a uniform pale tan; apparently they use butter extract. My ice cream looks like it is flecked with chocolate shavings from the browned milk solids. I’m betting that a trip through a blender or a strainer would take care of that.

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

Here’s another variation on chocolate ice cream; a twist on Mexican chocolate with cinnamon and a dash of cayenne pepper (the ice cream is named after Cincinnati, The Queen City, and how they like to put a hint of chocolate, cinnamon and cayenne in their chili). You don’t really taste the cayenne, instead you get a sort of tingle in the back of your throat. You do, however, taste the cinnamon and chocolate, and it is good. Don’t like the cayenne idea? Leave it out, and you’ll still have some really great ice cream.

This recipe starts off by making a chocolate paste of cocoa powder, bittersweet chocolate, water and sugar. This gets whisked into the cream cheese and set aside. The rest of the recipe is the same as the other ice creams. A cornstarch slurry is whisked into a boiling mixture of milk, sugar, cream and corn syrup. This then gets whisked into the chocolate/cream cheese mixture. Finally, the cinnamon and cayenne is stirred in. Chill and churn the base, and you’ll be ready to chow down.

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

This is one of the strangest peanut butter ice creams I’ve ever tasted. And I don’t mean that at all negatively. This ice cream has a lot going on, other than peanut butter. For example, there is the coconut milk and the toasted coconut. And let’s not forget about the cayenne pepper and the honey. See? Strange.

The ice cream starts out by boiling milk, cream, unsweetened coconut milk, sugar, corn syrup and honey. Then you add the cornstarch slurry and boil until the mixture is slightly thickened. Finally, you whisk in natural-style peanut butter, cream cheese, unsweetened, toasted coconut and a bit of cayenne pepper. The mixture is chilled, then churned.

The ice cream is very, very thick, almost chewy. It isn’t overwhelmingly peanut buttery, but strikes a nice balance between the peanut butter and the coconut flavors. The shreds of toasted coconut mean this isn’t the smoothest ice cream I’ve tried, but I liked the texture. I used a medium shredded coconut, and I think it was the perfect size. Large coconut flakes would be too intrusive. The recipe calls for 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper; I used a couple of sprinkles. Other than a very slight tickle at the back of your throat, you’d never guess that this ice cream had cayenne pepper in it. Next time, I’ll up the cayenne to about 1/16 of a teaspoon because I think the coldness dulls the pepper. Don’t like cayenne pepper? Leave it out.

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

This ice cream is like eating frozen chocolate pudding. How can that be bad?

Ms. Bauer is making a liar out of me. First it was the salty caramel ice cream that was one of the best ice creams I’ve ever made or eaten. Then the darkest chocolate ice cream in the world took that title. Now I have to consider that this ice cream is perhaps the best ice cream I’ve ever made or eaten. And I don’t even really like milk chocolate. What’s next? The whitest chocolate ice cream in the world? Actually, if it comes out of this book, I might consider trying it.

This recipe is a bit of a departure. There’s no cream cheese in this recipe; evaporated milk provides the proteins and body. And did you know that evaporated milk (not sweetened, condensed milk – you don’t want to mix those two up) mixed with chocolate is divine? This ice cream is smooth and pleasingly chocolatey. It is sweeter than the other chocolate ice cream I’ve made, like a kid’s version of chocolate versus an adult’s. It makes you smile when you eat it.

Once again, the ice cream starts out by boiling the liquids (milk, cream, evaporated milk, sugar and corn syrup) then adding cocoa powder and a cornstarch slurry. Once the mixture has thickened, you whisk in some chopped bittersweet chocolate, chill and churn. And if you can keep from eating half of the ice cream while it churns, you are a better woman than I am.

Two notes. First, if you have the book, there is a typo in the ingredient list. You need 1 1/4 cups of heavy cream, not 1/4 cup. Also, there’s a good chance that you’ll end up with little lumps of cocoa powder in the ice cream, despite whisking like a maniac. You can use a blender to smooth them out (I’d probably blend the mixture after it cools and before churning) if you are looking for a perfectly smooth texture. You could also try sifting the cocoa powder first.

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

In the past six months or so, we’ve had several of those serve-yourself frozen yogurt and toppings places open up in our town, and Bryan and I have become regular customers. It’s become our reward for working out at the gym. We run for an hour on the treadmill, then we eat pizza and frozen yogurt.

Quit judging me.

So you see, we are quite the connoisseurs when it comes to frozen yogurt (and packing as much frozen yogurt into a cup and still leaving room for toppings, but I digress). And this frozen yogurt is some of the best I’ve had. It’s creamy with a huge lemony punch. At first I wasn’t sure I’d like the blueberry swirl, but once the frozen yogurt set up in the freezer, it came together really well. My only complaint, and it is a small one, is that I left my blueberry sauce chunky, and those chunks froze into little pellets. But the flavor! Oh my. Just thinking about how it made my mouth pucker makes me want to run into the kitchen and make some more.

This recipe needs a little more advance preparation than most of the other recipes in the book. You start out by draining plain low-fat yogurt for 6-8 hours to thicken it. Could you just use Greek-style yogurt? I don’t know, but Bauer is pretty adamant about using plain, low-fat yogurt in all of her frozen yogurt recipes. While the yogurt is draining, you make a lemon syrup by  boiling lemon juice, lemon zest and sugar. Then you make a blueberry sauce by simmering blueberries and sugar together until the blueberries soften and burst. If you want a smooth sauce, you could puree the blueberries at this point. If you don’t mind some chunks, don’t.

Once the yogurt has drained and the syrups and sauces have cooled and chilled, you are ready to make the frozen yogurt base. The frozen yogurt base is pretty much the same as the ice cream base; milk, cream cheese, cream, corn syrup, sugar and a cornstarch slurry make a thickened liquid which is stirred into the drained yogurt. Then you add the lemon syrup, then chill and churn. As you are scooping the churned frozen yogurt into a container, you layer it with the chilled blueberry sauce. Let the whole thing freeze together, and you’ll find you don’t really need to leave the house to have good frozen yogurt.

Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

Do you remember the first time you tried gelato? I do. It was in Ann Arbor, Mich., in the middle of summer. I was there for business and had a free evening. After a few hours spent browsing at the huge Borders (sob) next to the college campus, I headed across the street to a new shop (I want to say it was an American Spoon store, but I’m not sure). In the window, they had a large sign advertising gelato. I knew gelato was Italian ice cream, but I had never tried it. At first I was a little overwhelmed with the selection. I knew I wanted to try a couple of flavors, but there were so many. The first flavor was easy. Chocolate. I had a line forming behind me, so I panicked and picked the gelato next to the chocolate. Pistachio. Dull, mossy-looking pistachio.

What a revelation the first bite was. This pistachio gelato was thick, almost chewy. It wasn’t super sweet, like commercial pistachio ice creams were. It was like eating the essence of a pistachio, only softer and colder. I was hooked.

Funny enough, I don’t remember much about the chocolate gelato.

Ever since that day, pistachio is the flavor I use as a benchmark for ice cream stores. And based on that, Jeni’s ice cream shops would pass with flying colors. This stuff is good. Not chocolate or salty caramel ice cream extraordinaire, but really, really good.

The ice cream starts off by roasting shelled, unsalted pistachios. Once the nuts get all toasty and slightly browned, you grind them to a paste in a food processor. That paste gets mixed with cream cheese which gets mixed into the cooked ice cream base (milk, cream, corn syrup, sugar, salt and cornstarch slurry). You cook the mixture and then churn it.

Like other really good pistachio ice creams I’ve had, this ice cream is chewy, almost meaty in texture. The pistachio flavor is pure without being sickly sweet. I loved the slight tang of the cream cheese here. The one problem I had with this recipe was that my pistachios never ground up into a smooth paste. Instead, they started to clump up and dry out. I went ahead and used them anyway; it made my ice cream a little gritty, but I really didn’t mind. I would have liked to know if I should let the pistachios cools after toasting (I didn’t), but Bauer doesn’t say.