Pear-Caramel Ice Cream

It’s getting to be like the Iron Chef around here. ‘Cause you know, I’m constantly rushing around making six plates of bourgeois food with the help of my sous chef in under an hour. Yeah. What I am doing Iron Chef-like is throwing the secret ingredient into ice cream. Give me an ingredient, and I immediately think ice cream. Thankfully no one’s challenged me with eel or chicken feet.

My friend gave me the smallest, cutest, sweetest, most perfectly ripe pears from her pear trees, along with a jar of home made pear jam. I shamelessly tore into that jam, eating a quarter of the jar in two days. While doing so, I thought, “This jam would make a great ice cream topping…for pear ice cream.” I had to act fast. Those pears were about to melt and the jam was about to disappear.

I changed the original ice cream recipe to make it lower in fat; I substituted half of the heavy cream with half and half. The resulting ice cream is creamy, but not deadly. The best part about pear ice cream is the gritty texture. That is, if you like pear grit.

Pear-Caramel Ice Cream
Makes 1 quart
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Levovitz

3 medium ripe pears, peeled, cored, and diced into ¼ inch pieces
¾ cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream
1cup half and half
⅛ teaspoon coarse salt
a few drops of lemon juice

• Spread sugar in a large, nonreactive, heavy-bottomed pan. Cook the sugar over medium heat. Gently stir with a heat-proof spatula when the sugar begins to liquefy and darken at the edges.
  
• When the sugar is melted and turns deep amber, stir in the pear pieces. The caramel will seize and harden, but will melt. (This freaked me out and I thought it would never melt, but it did.) Cook the pears for 10 minutes.
• Remove from heat and stir in cream, half and half, salt, and lemon juice.
• Let cool to room temperature, then puree in a blender.
• Chill, then freeze in your ice cream maker.
  

Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream

I’m jumping with uncontained excitement about the announcement that I’M GETTING MARRIED…to my ice cream maker. It’ll be a summer wedding, of course. Oh, man, do I love that little machine. I plug him in and we do the electric ice cream boogaloo all the time. I just can’t get enough of him. That’s why we’re getting married. I’m ready to commit.

Yeah, I’ve had ice cream machines before, but they were those big machines that require ice and rock salt. Too high maintenance for me. My little guy needs none of that. Just pop his hot, sleek bod in the freezer overnight to chill and were raring to go.

Anything he touches is soo much better. Smoothie? Freeze it. Juice? Freeze it. Yogurt? Freeze it. That’s how I can love him so much and not get fat. But about once a month we have a “special” night where we make full-fat ice cream. It’s sinful, but oh so good.

We finally got around to making the hazelnut ice cream that was supposed to be my “first.” It’s yummy and very rich. I’m so glad I waited. Well, I couldn’t wait ‘til marriage, but I waited long enough.

I tried as hard as I could to follow the directions in David Lebovitz’s ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop, but it just didn’t happen. I forgot to buy milk chocolate at the store, so used dark chocolate I had on hand. I also tried to make the recipe just slightly less indulgent by subbing non-fat milk for whole milk, and reducing the eggs by one. (It was still so rich that I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.) I also couldn’t waste all the hazelnuts that impart the hazelnutty flavor to the custard, so threw in a few tablespoons towards the end of the churning for crunchy little nut bits.

Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Levovitz
Makes about 1 quart

1 ½ cups hazelnuts, toasted
1 cup non-fat milk
2 cups heavy cream
¾ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon coarse salt
4 ounces dark chocolate, chips or finely chopped
4 egg yolks
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Toast hazelnuts in a single layer on a baking sheet in the oven for 12 minutes at 350°, turning half way through. Cool nuts. (ha ha) Rub nuts (hee hee) in a dish towel to remove the skins, then chop finely in a food processor or blender.
• Combine milk with 1 cup of the cream, sugar, and salt in a pan over medium heat. Once warm, add the chopped hazelnuts and remove from the heat. Cover and let steep for 1 hour.
• Heat remaining 1 cup of cream in a pan on the stove until it just begins to boil. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate pieces, and stir until the chocolate is melted and smooth.Pour the hazelnut-infused milk through a strainer or cheesecloth into a pan, squeezing all the liquid from the nuts. Save 3 or 4 tablespoons of the hazelnuts to add to the ice cream.
• Rewarm the hazelnut-infused milk. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm hazelnut-infused milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly.
• Stir the egg and milk mixture over medium heat, making sure to scrape the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens into custard. Pour the custard into the chocolate mixture, add the vanilla and stir until cool over an ice bath.
• Chill the mixture in the refrigerator, then freeze in your ice cream maker. Add the reserved chopped hazelnuts to the ice cream a few minutes before it is ready.