Ginger Ice Cream
makes about 3 cups
recipe can be doubled  (or tripled or quadrupled, if you have the capacity)

Once you get the hang of this method, you can make as many flavors as your imagination will allow. Instead of ginger, use anything that you can “steep,” like teas, or citrus zests, or mint leaves or herbs (lemon thyme, anyone?).

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk 
3/4 cup granulated sugar 
8 egg yolks
knob of fresh ginger

1. Wash the ginger and roughly chop up enough to get a heaping half a cup. Leaving the skin on is ok.

2. Pour the milk and cream into a pot. Add half cup of the sugar and keep the rest to the side. Throw in the chopped ginger. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Don’t walk away. This mix wants to boil over and it’s a sticky mess to clean up. Turn off the heat, then let it sit for a half hour to “steep” the ginger.

3. Bring the mix to a simmer again.

4. Meanwhile, have your egg yolks ready in a large bowl. Once the cream mix simmers, take the rest of your sugar and whisk it into your egg yolks. (This step of whisking in the sugar helps keep the eggs from scrambling when you pour the scorching cream over them.) Don’t do this any earlier, as the sugar reacts with the yolks and makes them clumpy.

5. Next, while whisking the entire time, SLOWLY pour the cream mix over the yolks. Again, do this gradually to keep the eggs from scrambling.

6. Now pour the contents of the bowl BACK in the pot. Have a fine mesh sieve set up over a clean bowl to the side.

7. Cook this very gently over medium-low heat, stirring the entire time. While stirring, make sure to keep scraping the bottom and corners, too, so nothing gets stuck there. (A wooden spoon or heat resistant rubber spatula works well.)

8. In a few minutes (5-10) it should start thickening up enough to coat a spoon. You should be able to draw a line with your finger  along the back of the spoon without it filling in. (This is called napé stage.)

9. Quickly remove the pot from the heat and pour through the fine mesh sieve you’ve already set up over a bowl.

10. The custard mix is ready. Now it needs to chill: Set it over a larger bowl filled with a little ice water. (I have a habit of overfilling it and then cursing myself as it pours into my ice cream bowl when I set it in. Don’t do like me.)

11. Once chilled, pour it into your ice cream maker and follow the directions that came with it. They all perform differently and take different amounts of time. You are looking for a soft-serve consistency. The ice cream will firm up a lot more when put in the freezer. If you remove it from the machine while it’s still soupy, it may get icy in your freezer.

Note: It is possible to over-spin an ice cream, so don’t leave it in the machine for hours thinking the longer the better. If you’ve ever overwhipped your cream before and watched it turn into butter and whey, the same thing can happen to ice cream. If left spinning too long, the butter starts to separate out of the cream and you can end up with a grainy mess. But the window for error is large, so don’t let me scare you. Just keep an eye on it.


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URL to original: https://www.pastrypal.com/2009/07/ginger-ice-cream-might-change-your-life/

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