Peanut Butter Ice Cream

It is almost Halloween and time for those little goblins and witches to make their appearance at your doorstep. So to honor the day of the spooky creatures and the oh so yummy candy treats I made a Peanut Butter Ice Cream.

One of my favorite flavor combination is Peanut Butter and Chocolate. This ice cream starts off with some really good chunky peanut butter mixed in with a sweet ice cream base. During the churning process I added in some miniature peanut butter chocolate cups, peanut butter morsels, whole roasted peanuts and for good measure some milk chocolate covered peanuts.

The result is a peanut butter ice cream that doesn't stick to to the roof of you mouth. Plenty of crunchy peanuts and some melt in your mouth chocolate. After tasting the ice cream I think adding ribbons of caramel or fudge would have taken it up a notch or two. I'll remember this for next time.

Mint Cookies'N Cream Ice Cream

Okay lets kick it up a notch.

So I am trying something new on this Ice Cream blog, I Got a new Camera (What a good excuse!!) a Nikon D60. I am really enjoying learning about photography and the gazillion of ways to get a shot, so here goes my first post with the new camera. I wanted to do a Step-By-Step shoot of my ice cream making process.

So today we are making Mint Cookies'N Cream Ice Cream!!

It is summer, it is hot so how about a nice vanilla bean ice cream with cool minty chocolate cookie pieces. Ready? Lets get started.

First get out a sauce pan to prepare the ice cream base. Choose a pan that will hold more than 3 cups of liquid.

I use a fresh Heavy Whipping cream because...if you gonna eat ice cream you might as well go hard or go home...none of that fat free whipping cream and low fat milk.... So pour in 1 cup of heavy whipping cream and 1 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of sugar. You will want put your heat on a meduim setting and stir the base occasionally, let it come to a low boil.


Now it is time to add your vanilla bean.

Split your vanilla bean lenghth wise scrape out the seeds and place them in to your ice cream base and then for extra measure place the add the vanilla bean pod as well.

As you are waiting for the ice cream base to come to a boil let seperate some eggs yolks for the next step of the ice cream base. I like to use 4 egg yolks for this recipe but if you want it to be extra rich you can go up to 6 eggs.

(I didn' really take a good shot of the eggs...It's a little out of focus and 1 of the yolks broke. But if you look closely in the bowl reflection you can see Michaela helping me out.)

Alright now that we have our egg yolks seperated lets whip them up and by now the ice cream base is hopefully at a low boil.

We now want to spoon in the ice cream base mixture into the egg yolk and temper the eggs. Because if you threw the egg yolks into the hot ice cream base you gonna get scrambled eggs and that wouldn't make for good ice cream.

After you have about 3/4 of the ice cream base tempered into the egg yolk bowl you will now pour it back into the sauce pan continue to stir the mixture until it warms up to 170 degrees F this will kill off any unwanted bacteria.

Now pour the ice cream base into a clean bowl and add 1 more cup of cream. Let it cool to room temperature and refrigerate for atleast 6 hours until it is nice and cold.

Once you have the ice cream base nice and cold pour it into ice cream maker. At this point you can also discard the vanilla bean pod.

Now it time to put your ice cream maker to work. For my ice cream maker it takes about 40-50 minutes for the mixture to come to a soft freeze.

While you are waiting for the mixture to freeze let prepare the mix in. For this recipe I am using Newman's Own Ogranic Newman O's, Mint Creme. Break the chocolate cookie sandwiches into small pieces so that the ice cream maker can stir them evenly.

When the ice cream comes to a soft freeze it should look like this.

It's starting to look like Ice Cream!! Now time to add your cookie pieces.

Let you ice cream maker stir in the cookie pieces and mix in the flavors up for about another 10 minutes. The ice cream should get firmer and then you are ready to place it an ice cream container to freeze for to a harder consistency. This will probably take at least 8 hours.

But if you want soft serve ice you enjoy it right away!! Here are a picture of the soft serve Mint Cookes'N Cream

Here is what the ice cream will look like after it has aged in the freezer overnight.

And there you have it...Mint Cookies'N Cream.

Please post your comment and critiques..pics, writting..I'm open to any suggestion.

Take care and eat ice cream!!

Almond Cherry Ice Cream

Cherry season is here...but it will soon be gone. It must have one of the shortest season. I must say cherrries are probably on of my favorite fruits. I found this recipe for Almond Cherry Ice Cream. The ice cream base is vanilla bean custard with a touch of almond extract, the candied cherries were made with fresh bing cherries. I mixed the freshly toasted almonds and candied cherries once the ice cream was firm in the ice cream mixer. This is a great way to enjoy a taste of summer.