Tropical cheesecake ice cream

This isn't quite the ice cream I set out to make. The original idea here was a) to test Jeni Britton's eggless ice cream recipe in a more complicated preparation than straight vanilla and b) use the leftover CSA carambola.

1 carambola
2/3 cup chopped pineapple
1 Tablespoon salted butter
1 Tablespoon brown sugar

The first change was because the carambola was a bit on the small side to flavor a full batch of ice cream. So I added a handful of frozen pineapple. That's not the best quality stuff so I knew I couldn't just use it straight. Instead I broke up the frozen pieces, sliced the carambola, sprinkled both with a mix of brown sugar and softened butter and put them under the broiler for around eight minutes. Broiling isn't the most popular way to cook fruit but I wanted the caramelization intense direct heat would give me which rules out roasting and I wanted to retain the released juices which rules out grilling (even if I had a grill). I think the broiling worked well, deepening and complicating the simple bright flavors of the fruit.

1 1/3 cups whole milk
7 ounces heavy cream
1 scant half cup sugar
1 Tablespoon light corn syrup
1 pinch salt

Next, I cut down the ice cream base recipe by a third since it makes a pretty big batch and I only had 3/4 cup of fruit to add. The original recipe called for simmering the milk and cream for four minutes with a vanilla bean to infuse the flavor so I figured I could simmer with the fruit and get a similar effect. It was kind of weird, but the milk mixture started thickening up before I added the corn starch. I did boil the milk a little high for a while; maybe that was it, or maybe it was a chemical effect from the fruit (although I can't find any indication either fruit can do that). I dunno.

1 scant Tablespoon cornstarch
2 Tablespoons cream cheese, softened

So when I added the cornstarch (mixed with a little of the milk) to the mix, it thickened up into a custard-like consistency. And that got even thicker when I mixed in the cream cheese. That cream cheese was the impetus for the third big change. It was from the same container of cream cheese I used in the original recipe a couple weeks ago and you know how cream cheese gets stronger in flavor over time. With that flavor in the mix, it tasted like cheesecake. Nothing wrong with that even if it wasn't quite what I was aiming at. I decided to go with it by gathering about a half cup of crumbs from my last batch of oat bars (I made it with pumpkin butter as I said I would. Not bad, but I should have added a bit of lemon.) to mix in after churning to simulate a crumb crust.

After a night in the refrigerator, the mix was seriously thick. Mixes that thick usually stop the churn's motor before they can get a good amount of air churned in, but this one, because it was a small batch, managed to wind itself up around the paddle leaving the bucket to spin freely, stopping the churning early without stopping the motor.






In went the crumbs and then a night in the freezer. Here's the final version:

The extra thickness out of the churn translated to a pretty solid, but still scoopable ice cream out of the freezer. There are actually a few issues there; that thickness certainly, but also how packed full of solid bits this particular flavor is, and third, the ice cream began melting with some alacrity as I was scooping it out of the churn-bucket which means I immediately lost a fair bit of the churned in air. In the future I think I'll stick a dishtowel in the freezer to use as a buffer between the ice cream carton I'm filling and the warm metal top of my kitchen cart.

All those solid bits I mentioned mean that this is a pretty chewy ice cream. The strong cream cheese flavor I was getting earlier is hard to find between the crust crumbs and bits of caramelized fruit in each bite. The former is a little prominent over the latter so I'd make a note to use less next time if I had any idea how much I used this time. On the other hand, the fruit flavor has spread out into the ice cream itself more. It's subtle until you bit into a bit of fruit, but it's there. Pineapple and carambola don't identifiably jump out at you (particularly since their flavors were altered by the broiling) but that light vague tropical flavor permeates the whole. Leaving the fruit a little chunky (and leaving the skin on the carambola) was a good idea; I like all the different textures I'm getting and the variation in flavor in each bite. There's a good bit of sugar in each of the components so the whole is pretty sweet, but I think there's enough else going on to keep it from getting cloying. Overall, I'm really liking the combination and complexity of this recipe and the Jeni-style base is an important component and not just a good way to avoid separating eggs. It's got a real Ben & Jerry's vibe to it, too. Nobody else has tried it yet, but I think it's going to go over well.

CSA week two overflow - black sapote colada sherbet

On second thought, maybe those sapotes are ready to be used after all.

As I mentioned a week ago, my plan for any tropical fruit we get this year is to substitute it into my unexpectedly fabulous piña colada sherbet recipe for either the bananas or the pineapple depending on the texture and see how it turns out. Last July I subbed in mango for the bananas which worked quite well but I haven't gotten back to the idea until now.

I'm taking out the bananas again this time which gives me some concern over texture as bananas are rather special in that regard. But if anything can replace that thick fat-mimicking creaminess is sapote. That makes my ingredient list:
1 large and 1 small black sapote
1 1/2 cups fresh pineapple
2 Tablespoons or so pineapple juice from the container I was keeping the pineapple pieces in
1 cup thick coconut milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon light rum
and
1 Tablespoon dutch process cocoa

The challenge each time I do this is picking the complementary flavors that will bring out the flavor of the guest fruit. In the original I used lime juice and hot sauce. For the mango, lime juice again along with ginger, cinnamon and allspice. This time the obvious choice is to nix the lime and add cocoa. I'll have to do some research to figure out the best choices when canistels and caiminos come along.

No cooking required here so I just tossed everything into the blender and let it spin. The result is, texturally and visually, indistinguishable from chocolate pudding and not far off in flavor either. An ice cream churn is entirely optional; you could serve this as is.




You could, anyway; I've got a bad churining habit to maintain. So I let the mixture cool for eight hours in the back of the fridge and then gave it a turn in the ice cream machine. After 25 minutes it wasn't really solidifying but it was getting lumpy and the bucket was running out of freeze so decided that was good enough and I put it into the freezer to ripen.

And the next day I scooped some out and gave it a try:

It has the mouth feel of premium ice cream without a hint of ice crystals, gumminess, insta-melt or the other ills sherbet is prone to proving again that bananas aren't as special as Alton Brown makes them out to be.

The flavors are muted at freezer temperatures but a couple minutes of warming brings them out intensely with not-quite-chocolate and pineapple at the front fading to a lingering not-quite-chocolate/coconut. The cocoa did a good job highlighting the chocolate-esque notes in the black sapote but it's still clearly cocoa plus tropical fruits. It's an interestingly unusual but quite pleasant combination. Actually, around here it's not so unusual; all the local confectioners use tropical fruits in their chocolates. It is unusual that I like it though. Let's see what my co-workers think.

Mango colada sherbet

After my (entirely incidentally low-fat, low-calorie and vegan) piña colada sherbet surpassed expectations so spectacularly a couple weeks ago I've been eager to try some variations both because they'll probably taste really good and to figure out exactly what I did right.

This week, with the bounty of mangoes from both festivals and backyards, the variation to try was obvious. I could have just switched out the bananas, but I decided to increase the amount of mango. I wanted the mangoes to be predominant and also I was using freezer-burnt pre-packed pineapple chunks instead of the really nice fresh pineapple I had last time so best if they don't stand out too much. Also, I changed up the fiddly bits to match the new flavors. As I'm newly educated as to mango varieties I gave the sort to use a bit of thought. I wanted something with a bit of fiber to help the sherbet thicken, sweet so I can use less sugar and with a bold flavor as the cold tends to tone things down. But after all that thought I remembered that I didn't actually have a lot of options and I used the mangoes a co-worker brought in. Close enough.


Here's what I came up with:

1 1/2 cups chopped mango (extra-ripe mushy bits are fine. It's all going into the blender)
1 cup chopped pineapple
1 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup sugar (or 1/4 cup Splenda blend)
juice from 1/2 lime
2 Tablespoons light rum
1 pinch salt
1 dash dried ginger powder (or equivalent in ground fresh ginger. I have a dried ginger root that I grated using a microplane.)
1 dash cinnamon (fresh grated again is better)
1 dash allspice (you could probably use a spice grinder on dried allspice berries if you wanted. I haven't tried it so I don't know if it makes much of a difference.)

Put it all in a blender. Blend smooth. Chill to 40 degrees F. Churn and ripen.

I also chopped a frozen banana into 1/2 inch cubes and mixed it in as I removed the sherbet from the churn, but that's optional.


The results are about as good as the original piña colada, which is to say very good indeed. Each bite starts with pineapple, fades into mango and lingers with the richness of the spices unless you get a bite with banana which takes over as the mango fades and gives a nice chew to contrast with the creamy melt-away smoothness of the sherbet. This would work perfectly in bellinis with a particularly dry champagne. The sweetness of the sherbet isn't cloying but it lingers and it could use something to cut through. Failing the champagne, a cup of coffee isn't a bad idea.

So it looks like the bananas weren't necessary to the texture of the sherbet. I'll have to compare coconut milk and milk milk to see how much difference that substitution makes both to texture and to healthiness. Coconut oil is just about the least healthy fat out there and while I don't think it's made from the same bits coconut milk is I can't imagine the fat in coconut milk is any better. Luckily there's not a heck of a lot of it in one cup. Substituting in real milk would also expand the possible flavors beyond the tropical. Like I said, I'll have to give this some consideration.

Piña Colada Sherbet

or possibly sorbet. Whether coconut milk counts is a point on which reasonable men can disagree.

This recipe was inspired by a poor freezer packing job that popped the door open while I was at work a few days ago. Nothing got above refrigerator temperature so no bacterial bonanza, but the impromptu defrosting did no good for the texture of some of my freezer's contents, most notably the bananas (awaiting their turn as smoothie components) which turned into mush.

Well, that's perfect for making ice cream so off I went. Also on hand was a pineapple that I wanted to do something with beyond just eating in chunks so a tropical flavor was in order. In Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop I found a tropical sorbet that used bananas and pineapple, but also tangerines and passion fruit which I didn't have. There was also a Piña Colada sherbet that didn't use banana (as the traditional drink recipe doesn't) but did have the intriguing inclusion of coconut milk. So I decided to improvise something somewhere in between with a few touches of my own.

Ingredients:
2 bananas, frozen and defrosted so they get all glorpy
1 1/2 cups pineapple, cut in chunks [fresh is best and the Golden Sweet variety is a good choice.]
1 cup canned coconut milk [not Coco Lopez which is sweetened. I should look into fresh. If I'm going to live in a town where I risk getting conked on the head by falling coconuts I should at least reap the benefits.]
juice of 1/2 lime
1/3 cup Splenda blend or 2/3 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon dark rum [I'm still using up the bottle of light rum I bought last year so I used that]
1 teaspoon kosher salt
6 shots vinegar-based hot sauce [for this application I chose Dat'l Do-it Devil Drops which have a bright fruity flavor and lots of heat.] or a little mint extract or just a shot of vanilla if you're not feeling adventurous



Just put everything in a blender, blend until smooth, chill to 40 degrees F, churn as per your machines instructions and ripen overnight.


And here's the end result. The texture is impeccably soft, creamy and smooth with not a hint of ice crystals or fruit fiber and the flavor is that lovely tropical synergy of banana, pineapple and coconut with a just noticeable note of pepper and a trace of burn to round it out. Neither the rum nor the off chemical taste Splenda can have are at all noticeable. If you want to taste the rum, I'd suggest making a rum float instead of adding more to the mix. And it's low fat and relatively low calorie. A big hit in my Weight Watching office.