Z — So I made the Lemon Meringue Pie Ice Cream! It’s hardening in my freezer right now, but the first taste out of the machine was pretty impressive. I ended up combining a few ideas for the final procedure: I like Melissa Clark’s idea (from the NY times recipe I sent) of making a “citrus sugar” using zest, I think this adds the extra pop of flavor that the extract might provide in the recipe you sent. However, I don’t like that she doesn’t make a “true custard” base, so I’ve been following Alton Brown’s method for making custard (http://www.ulive.com/video/good-eats-vanilla-ice-cream). However, I also wanted to incorporate some corn syrup into the mixture rather than all sugar because I LOVE what it does to the final texture (I want dense and super creamy). Finally, I have been adding a tiny bit of Xanthan Gum also because of what it does to texture (I bought a bag of the “Bob’s Red Mill” brand stuff and use about 1/4-1/2 tsp per 1-2 qt batch of ice cream). Man, that sounds more complicated than it really is. Here’s what I did (combined ingredients list below): I started with 1/2 cup sugar in the blender (rather than food processor as melissa clark suggested, which was why I had to start editing ON THE FLY), with the zest of 3 lemons. Of course the stuff was just instantly stuck to the sides and not really blending, so I decided I’d add the corn syrup right then! I added about a half cup thinking I could always add more later if I wanted the base sweeter (I’ve read that the pre-churn mix should be sweeter than you want the final product cuz cooling will blunt the perceived sweetness). This made a beautiful thick yellow liquid/paste. To this I added 2 oz rye (like the bourbon idea in the recipe you sent), alcohol also inhibits ice crystal formation in the final mix – can you tell I’m obsessed with non-icy homemade ice cream yet? At this moment I had a flash of inspiration and decided I was going to just mix the egg yolks into all this in the blender rather than whisking as I’ve done before, so I put the 6 egg yolks in there, mixed it up (my blender was on low every time I did anything), and it looked gorgeous again. While all this was going down, I had my 2 cups heavy cream + 1 cup whole milk in a saucepan on the stove, waiting for it to barely bubble as directed by Alton Brown. Once it did, I tempered the egg mix by adding the heated dairy one ladleful at a time into the blender while it was blending (still on low), this worked great. I mixed it all into the blender, just filling it barely. Now, I will say that a purist will probably find this undesirable because when I poured it back into the pan, there was a layer of tiny foamy bubbles on the top, but I was undeterred by this. I think the issue is that if you’re judging your custard’s done-ness by bubble formation, having that foam on the top makes it very hard to judge. However, I use my candy thermometer to tell me when the custard hits 170 as I’m constantly stirring, and that’s my done-point. So, I stirred and waited until 170, took it off the heat, and waited just a minute or two before adding the zest of one more lemon and juice of one lemon and stirring in with the same large spoon I’d been stirring the custard with. I poured all this into a pre-chilled pyrex baking dish (one of the big rectangular ones), snapped the lid on and put it in the fridge to chill. I left it overnight, took it out, dumped it into the machine, added the 1/4-1/2 tsp (didn’t measure precisely) xanthan gum, and let the machine churn for 30 minutes. It looked PERFECT! I tried to allow the machine to incorporate the graham crackers and marshamallows (I chopped up 3 regular sized graham crackers and added perhaps a cup of mini marshmallows – I LOVE STUFF IN ICE CREAM and the 1/2 cup + 1/2 cup suggested sounded like NOT ENOUGH), but it couldn’t handle it! So I mixed it up myself with a spatula, put it all into a smaller square pyrex (maybe 9×9?), and it’s now chilling in the freezer looking like perfection!!! WHEW. Not a recipe to try with young leo man, but a fun one for a more intensely decadent treat perhaps? Ingredients: 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup white corn syrup (+ more to taste) zest of 4 lemons juice of one lemon 2 oz rye (a younger – 2 yo – “grassier” rye I think would be best) 6 egg yolks 2 cups (1 pint) heavy cream 1 cup whole milk 1/4-1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum 3 graham crackers 1/2-1 cup mini marshmallows Lots of love, – jph
