Monday, September 21, 2009

Maple Walnut Ice Cream (with bonus scrambled eggs!)



During Ramadan, I got the wild idea that I would like to make ice cream for our entire office. All 60 of them. I have the kind of ice cream maker that you freeze the core, which means I had to make batches of the flavors I chose over several days. I made Dorie's vanilla ice cream (the very best vanilla ice cream), and her chocolate ganache ice cream (my favorite chocolate ice cream). And this recipe from The Perfect Scoop jumped out at me, mostly because I love maple and walnuts are good for you, so this is practically health food!

The recipe has you start out by making the wet walnuts, which are walnuts toasted in the oven and then boiled in maple syrup. Then you build the custard. And that is where my little world fell apart. The recipe calls for heating the custard over medium heat until it thickens. Medium heat on my cooktop is pretty hot, and against my better judgment, I didn't reduce the heat and the custard went from thickened to scrambled eggs in the amount of time it took me to reach for the strainer. I panicked and furiously shook and stirred the congealed mass in the strainer until enough came through the strainer to stabilize and thicken the cream and maple syrup mixture.

It froze up nicely, softer than some other ice creams I've made recently, probably due to the high maple syrup content. Still, the maple flavor couldn't compete with the walnut flavor, which dominated in a not so pleasant way. I like my maple walnut a little more maple-y, so if I make this one again, I'll cut back on the walnuts.

5 comments:

Pamela said...

I haven't had maple walnut ice cream in forever, and I've seen this recipe in the book. Sorry you had some trouble with it. It was mighty thoughtful of you to make ice cream to share with your coworkers! I wish I worked with you. :o)

Anonymous said...

Wow! I can't believe you made ice cream for the whole office. I've been wanting to make this flavor. Maybe adding some natural maple flavor/extract would up the flavor.

margot said...

Yum, what a wonderful fall flavor! I've never even noticed this flavor in The Perfect Scoop, I'm happy I saw your review of it so I know to modify a bit if I ever make it (and I want to now).

Jennifer said...

What a thoughtful thing to do for your coworkers!

Maple walnut ice cream sounds delicious!

Michele said...

Maple and walnut are two of my favorite flavors. How awesome!!