Oooooooooh it’s a hot one, and what better to do than try some ice cream at

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Recipe 034: Salted Duck Yolk Ice Cream

This recipe is from a reddit post that interested me, so hey, let’s give it a go. I just used xanthan gum rather than a stabilizer mix because that’s what I had on hand. Lemme say: the recipe author loves their immersion blender.

Salted duck yolk ice cream:

Ingredients:

  • 2 whole milk

  • 1 cup heavy cream

  • 4 egg yolks (chicken)

  • ¼ tsp xanthan gum

  • 1/8 tsp fine sea salt

  • ¾ cup sugar

  • 2 tbsp clear corn syrup

  • 5 salted cured duck yolks

  • ½ tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

  1. Heat oven to 330 F. Once at temp, place duck yolks on a parchment-lined tray and put inside oven.

  2. Cook yolks for 10-15 minutes, until oils of yolks are released and it smells a bit of ammonia.

  3. Remove yolks from oven, let cook, and then mash with fork.

  4. Prepare medium size pot & ice bath for pot.

  5. In pot milk, corn syrup, and egg yolks (chicken).

  6. In small bowl, mix sugar and xathan gum, then add to wet ingredients. Use immersion blender to blend until smooth.

  7. Heat pot over low heat or double boiler, stirring often, until mix reaches 167 F / 75 C.

  8. Once reached that temp, remove from heat and place in ice bath.

  9. Add cream and salt to mix.

  10. Add duck egg mash to mix, and immersion blend.

  11. Chill mixture in fridge for at least 6 hours.

  12. Add vanilla, then give one more immersion blend.

  13. Strain mix and churn in machine until soft-serve thick, about 20 minutes.

TASTING NOTES: The flavour is nice. The texture is not. The original recipe writer said that it was supposed to be gritty from the duck eggs, to match the dim sum bun it’s based on, but I didn’t enjoy getting little yolk granules in corners of my mouth. Maybe I needed to mash them finer, or immersion blend harder.

WORTH MAKING: Only if you’re real nostalgic about duck eggs.

Recipe 035: Black Cherry Sherbert

What a fun word to say, sherbert.

Anyways I was looking for plums at the grocery store to make a nice icebox plum sorbet, but they’re not in season yet. But there were some lovely black cherries, so I took this Serious Eats recipe and ran with it.

Black cherry juice:

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups black cherries

  • 2 cups water, divided

Instructions:

  1. Remove stems from cherries. I cut the cherries to make it quicker to extract juice, but maybe that doesn’t really matter, you do what you’ve got time for.

  2. In a small pot, put the cherries and 1 cup of water together and heat on medium.

  3. Once water is simmering, turn down heat to low and let simmer for half an hour or so.

  4. You can mash the cherries to help get out the juices, but be careful of drops splattering out and staining things!

  5. Strain out the mash to get the first round of juice.

  6. Add the remaining cup of water and the strained mash to the pot, and simmer for another 15 minutes.

  7. Strain again to get the last of the juice. I ended up with 2 cups.

Black cherry sherbert:

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups black cherry juice from above

  • 1 cup cream

  • 1 cup clear corn syrup

  • ½ cup sugar

  • ¼ tsp fine salt, or ½ tsp kosher

  • ¼ tsp citric acid

Instructions:

  1. Mix juice, cream, corn syrup, and sugar together in mixing bowl until sugar is dissolved.

  2. Add salt and citric acid to taste.

  3. Chill in fridge for at least 3 hours.

  4. Once chilled, churn mix until soft serve thick, about 25 minutes.

TASTING NOTES: I think it’s pretty solid, but I would like a more intense cherry flavour. This is where adding extracts or other flavouring on top of the juice might’ve helped. It might also be that the strong sweetness (and balancing sourness) of the sherbert muffles the fruit flavour. But still, nice!

WORTH MAKING: Even with the caveats, yes.

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….

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