Spring is hitting here, and that means a young ice cream’s fancy turns to another instalment of
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Recipe 007: Roasted Magnolia & Peach
Theres a magnolia tree near our building, and right now it’s in brilliant pink bloom. And you can eat those blooms! I used BlackForager’s magnolia syrup recipe (with a possible misapplication of technique by me), and a doubling of the (modified) Salt & Straw gelato base because of the amount of sugar in the syrup.
Roasted magnolia syrup:
Ingredients:
1.5 cups sugar
1 cup water
4 cups washed magnolia petals
Instructions:
In a heavy-bottomed (this will be important later) saucepan, mix the salt and sugar and stir over medium heat, until it just starts to bubble at the edges.
Turn off the heat and stir in the petals.
Let steep for 30 minutes.
Strain out syrup.
Roasted magnolia & peach ice cream:
Ingredients:
Syrup from above (about 2 cups)
600 grams frozen peach slices
1 cup nonfat dry milk powder
½ teaspoon xanthan gum
½ cup light corn syrup
3 cups whole milk
2/3 cup heavy cream
Instructions:
Roast the peach slices in an oven for about 45 minutes, until they start to brown.
Let slices cool, then puree using hand blender to about 300mL of peach goop, and put aside.
In a small bowl, mix the xanthan gum and milk powder.
In a medium pot, mix the milk and the corn syrup well.
Add xantham-powder mix and whisk fast until smooth.
Add syrup.
Cook over medium heat, turning down to avoid a simmer, for about 3 minutes to make sure everything is dissolved.
Remove from heat and whisk in peach puree. Optional: add a teaspoon (so half a teaspoon per batch) of vanilla extract or paste.
Let cool, then chill in fridge overnight.
This makes two batches, so churn according to the size of your machine, and freeze churned batches in freezer overnight.
TASTING NOTES: So when I was initially mixing this, there was no peach. I just had the magnolia, but after chilling, I realized it was too brown sugar-y and had only a whisper of the gingery magnolia petals, and I think it was because I burnt the syrup. So, how to save it? Peaches! And it worked, the brightness of the peach offset the caramelousity of the syrup. Adding vanilla helped smooth it all out. A rich and complicated flavour.
WORTH MAKING: I think so! But you haven’t seen the last of the magnolias…
Recipe 008: Red Bean Ice Cream
Another one of the “what do we need to use up” recipes. In this case, a bag of sweetened red bean paste. I found this recipe on Ice Cream Nation, a site which also had a number of interesting looking recipes (I wanna try this Cuberdon ice cream)! Now, this has another possible mistake on my part that I’ll get into in the notes.
Red bean ice cream:
Ingredients:
300g sweetened red bean paste
250mL 33% cream
350mL whole milk
120mL sugar
6 egg yolks
Instructions:
Mix yolks, milk and cream in saucepan.
Whisking frequently, heat on medium until the mixture reaches the Nappe stage (becomes a custard), around 180-183 F.
Remove from heat and add bean paste, mixing until everything is fully incorporated.
Cool & then chill for a couple hours in fridge.
Churn and freeze.
Tasting notes: Too sweet for me. I used sweetened bean paste, but the recipe does not specify sweetened! So, too much sugar, too much sweet. It did form a really dense ice cream in the container, but the mouthfeel was pretty easy, not alarmingly firm.
WORTH MAKING: With regular red bean paste, probably. With what I did, no. But we’ll see what happens next week, with the rest of the red bean paste…
Recipe 009: Salted Butter-Caramel
A couple people said their favourite ice cream was salted caramel. So, here’s one for them! I just did the recipe totally as written, and it’s a long one, so why don’t you go check out David Lebovitz’s Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream recipe. You make a hard caramel sheet and break it to get bits to put into a salted caramel cream, it’s a whole fun production.
TASTING NOTES: Very good! Given more time, the hard bits should soften more, which I think will be positive. Right now, the hard caramel is a bit overpowering to the (very good) cream. F
WORTH MAKING: Abso-lutely.
Thanks for reading, and let me know if you try any of these recipes. Every week I’ll be posting one (or two, or three) more, until we reach….