Peppermint ice cream with chocolate chips
The best ice cream is vanilla bean ice cream, the best dessert is vanilla ice cream with just-warmed-through raspberries, but …
… you have to vary the routine occasionally, or else you’ll be sick of it before you know it. I made my way down this course when the peppermint bush started to grow and grow and grow just outside the back door.
Flavouring ice cream is simple — as long as the flavouring to be used is potent. Thus most fruits don’t make for great ice creams, no matter how aggressive their flavour when you bite into their flesh.
Save fruits for sorbets. Sorbets are pretty much the simplest form of ice — just a mix of juice and puree, and occasionally zest — mixed or whizzed with a similar volume of sugar syrup. The proportions of the syrup are rather important — 800g sugar and a litre of water brought to the boil and bubbled rapidly until the solution forms large bubbles. The fruit content depends on the fruit and the season. But generally, I have found that the add and taste method is best.
With ice cream, it’s best to go for flavourings that are powerful and you know work and taste attractive at all levels of the palate — don’t just choose a flavour to be different. So go for cinnamon, but forget asparagus; be happy with peppermint, but dismiss rose petals; try lemon verbena and decide; and when in doubt you know you can always rely on vanilla beans.
The best ice creams and sorbets come from the best churns. If you’re keen to make ice cream regularly, then invest in a real churn. And if you really want to taste ice cream at the peak of its glory — take it straight from the churn.
2 cups milk
2 cups cream
150g caster sugar
bunch of peppermint
½ vanilla bean, split along its length
4 egg yolks
30g your favourite chocolate, in bite-size chips, or grated
1
Mix the milk and cream with half the sugar. Toss in the peppermint and the vanilla bean, the seeds scraped from the pod into the cream.
2
Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat.
3
Whisk the egg yolks with the rest of the sugar, until blended, and keep whisking until the mixture whitens and forms ribbons.
4
Pour a little of the flavoured milk-cream into the egg-sugar mix, and then pour back into the saucepan off the heat.
5
On a low heat, stirring all the while, heat the flavoured cream-eggs mixture until it thickens (85°C). Remove, force through a sieve to remove the peppermint and vanilla bean, and plunge the saucepan base into cold water to stop the cooking, whisking to assist the reduction in temperature.
6
When cool, place in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap until cold; then churn, tossing in the chocolate chips. (If you prefer, leave the peppermint flavour to itself, and grate the chocolate over the top at the table.) Put your mould in the freezer while the mix is churning.
7
When churned, spoon into the very cold bowl. Make sure you remove from the freezer and put into the fridge at least 20 minutes before serving. Solid ice cream is most off-putting.
Note: If you like moulded ice cream for a dessert, the peppermint makes a terrific partner for chocolate ice cream. Just put into a teacup shaped mould, large or small, individual or for a party, and leave a hole for some chocolate ice cream. Make the chocolate ice cream (see page 182) and spoon it into the hole. Freeze and serve, sliced. This version is marvellous in the old ‘bombe’ moulds.
WINE: As a rule, wine and chocolate don’t mix. As a second rule, peppermint and wine don’t mix. Rutherglen muscat’s about the only thing I have found to match chocolate-based desserts.