Ice Ice-Cream

What else are you going to make when it is -5 at mid-day!

The recipe and method were borrowed from Mr Blumenthal.

1 litre of milk

180g of egg yolks

90g of cane sugar

4 vanilla pods

5 coffee beans

 

The secret ingredient …

Some actual snow !

 

Ice Ice-cream step one …

Whizz up the yolks and sugar to a fluffy thick airy egg syrup.

 

Ice Ice-cream step two …

Boil the milk, coffee beans, the stripped out seeds and husks of the vanilla pods and then cool in the snow to 60C.

If you have no snow, you can sit your pan in an ice bath.

 

Ice Ice-cream step three …

Mixed the cool (60C) infused milk with the whisked up eggs.  This will partly cook the egg and you will end up with a well set custard.

Heat to 70C for five minutes to pasturise the egg …

then rapidly chill again out in the snow and leave at fridge temperature for 24 hours to allow the flavours to develop.

 

Ice Ice-cream step four …

Put the mixture into an ice-cream maker for as long as it takes to churn it all down into fluffy light -5 pillowy, wallowing icecreamy deliciousness.

Then properly freeze at -18C for a while before tasting.

 

Ice Ice-cream step five …

The tasting.

It comes out of the freezer quite hard but after 5 minutes at room temperature it is quite malleable like plasticine.

It is not sticky sweet like many icecreams and is much lower in fat.  This is all about the texture and flavour.  It melts … just vanishes on the tongue … much like a sorbet but the texture is silky smooth.

As it warms in the mouth you get a huge vanilla hit and then the back flavour is all about the coffee.  I was stunned at how dominant that was, given that there was just a few beans in it.  Amazing.

 

I have never used this technique before and it is knockout.  Hats off to Heston … the world’s best chef and if you are half minded to buy an amazing cook book then “The Fat Duck Cook-Book” is highly recommended.

 

We have plenty of visitors booked for this year and I can see that I will be making lots of this.