Make Me Scream
July 8, 2022 4:49 AM   Subscribe

I got a big tax refund this year and splurged on a fancy new high-tech ice cream maker. I have a few recipe books, but am in search of even more of the most lavish, outrageous, decadent ice cream recipes out there.

The beauty of this machine is that it's got an internal freezer, so you don't need to freeze anything the way you do with most home machines - so I could make multiple batches in one day. And - it has a separate style of paddle churn that is supposed to be specially designed to make gelato if that's how I wanna roll. So my roommate and I are starting to get a little giddy about testing it out this weekend.

I have the Ben and Jerry's book, the Ample Hills book, and David Lebovitz's book, and very likely will give them all a workout. But I wanna push the envelope even more. Like, so far here's what we have on the apartment short list:

* dark chocolate with peanut butter oreos, and possibly a peanut butter swirl and some chopped peanut butter cups (this has been deemed the inaugural batch)
* butterscotch with chopped Heath bar or chopped nut brittle
* a mango sorbet and a passionfruit sorbet
* Ample Hills "Cookie au lait", a coffee ice cream with oreos (we are currently having a small friendy disagreement about whether they should be peanut butter oreos or regular)
* David Lebovitz' chocolate and raspberry ice cream
* classic Italian fior di latte gelato, only using the absolute best possible quality of all ingredients
* a cherry, a raspberry, and a red currant sorbet so I can recreate this sundae I had while on a vacation and visited Giverny one afternoon
* a vegan chocolate that uses coconut milk so I can also throw in some chopped almonds and make it an Almond Joy flavor or something

I deliberately only purchased enough freezer containers to allow for three quarts of ice cream in the freezer at a time. But otherwise there aren't any real restrictions - I figure if there's something I make that I don't like but my roommate does, I can just give it all to him and make another batch for me because this thing works fast enough. We just really wanna INDULGE, dammit.

Hit me!
posted by EmpressCallipygos to Food & Drink (31 answers total) 33 users marked this as a favorite
 
This night sky sorbet is delicious.
posted by shadygrove at 5:07 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


A friend recently recommended me this blackcurrant leaf sorbet as being unbelievably good, but while I have a blackcurrant bush, I don't have an ice cream maker, so I'll pass it on to you instead. Though I think blackcurrants are not quite such a thing in the US, so you might be out of luck. But just in case.
posted by penguin pie at 5:12 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


I made this fennel ice cream a couple of years ago, and still think about it regularly. A bit oddball, but less so than I'd expected.
posted by Karmeliet at 5:12 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Here's one I've made twice that's very good:

Bourbon Nectarine Ice Cream

- 2 nectarines, quartered & pits removed, roasted at 375 for an hour (wrap in foil so it doesn't make a huge mess and the syrup is reserved)
- allow to cool, then blitz with a blender

- 1 3/4 cup heavy cream
- 1 cup milk (I used 2% but I'm sure whole is fine too)
- 3/4 cup sugar (I think I used a little less)
- 1/4 cup your favorite bourbon
- salt, just a little bit

Heat cream & sugar & salt until the sugar is melted, then thoroughly stir in milk. Add bourbon. Allow to cool. Add nectarines & stir until distributed.

Then ice cream machine it.
posted by phunniemee at 5:14 AM on July 8, 2022 [6 favorites]


Around the same time as making the bourbon ice cream I also had an idea to make a cherry ice cream with little chunks of actual pie crust mixed into it, but I never got around to it.
posted by phunniemee at 5:15 AM on July 8, 2022


"Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home" book is excellent. We made her roasted strawberry buttermilk ice cream, and then we made it like four more times and didn't make it to any other recipe in the list because it was so delish.
posted by ellerhodes at 5:42 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


Best answer: I am a fancy ice-cream advocate, and here are some of my favorites:

Vanilla ice cream lightly infused with tarragon, with a balsamic glaze swirl and lots of candied walnuts mixed in. I served it with warmed macerated strawberries and it was incredible.

Peach cardamom was also a hit. I infused the cream mixture with crushed cardamom pods, mashed peaches, and a teeny pinch of saffron. I made some extra spicy gingerbread cookies to go with, but you could also just crumble them and add to the ice cream itself.

I also made Guinness ice cream (you cook down Guinness to a syrup an add that to the cream base) and served it with frambois lambic as a boozy ice cream float.
posted by ananci at 6:07 AM on July 8, 2022 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: I also made Guinness ice cream (you cook down Guinness to a syrup an add that to the cream base)

Ooh, the Ample Hills book has a recipe where you basically take that, add it to a chocolate cream base, and then throw in chopped up chocolate-covered pretzels!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:22 AM on July 8, 2022


I second the Jeni’s recommendation above. Her dark chocolate ice cream is exquisite and she has a number of mix-in ideas to really let your creativity shine.
posted by hilaryjade at 6:53 AM on July 8, 2022


If you can get hold of clotted cream in NYC, clotted cream ice cream is ultra rich and you can mix in whatever you like (raspberry and ginger example recipes, it's also amazing with honeycomb/caramel flavours).
posted by terretu at 6:55 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


Mr. gudrun is in the process of downsizing his substantial cookbook collection, and one of the ones on the pile to go to the nearby little free library is The Ultimate Ice Cream Book by Bruce Weinstein. Memail me if you want me to pass it on, which I would be happy to do (better a Mefite over a random neighbor, is my philosophy).
posted by gudrun at 7:22 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


When in Cambridge, MA, I stumbled on Toscanini's B3 (brown butter, brownie, and brown sugar) ice cream, which I fell in love with; thankfully, there's a recipe online for a dupe of it, which I can endorse heartily.
posted by carrienation at 7:35 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


Best answer: It's such fun to experiment with ice cream! I've been dying to try Dana Cree's Toasted Hay ice cream, from her book, Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream. One section of the book also covers natural colourings, which is luxurious on its own.

Previous outrageous flavors I've made using trial and error, often starting from the Ben & Jerry's base, are:
- pine, by steeping actual pine needles gathered locally
- earl grey/bergamot with orange zest "sprinkles"
- grapefruit (better than I even thought it would be)
- pandan with mango syrup
- cherry ice cream with coca-cola syrup

Enjoy!
posted by cocoagirl at 8:17 AM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]


I had the olive oil gelato at Otto a couple of times and holy smokes was it good.
posted by saladin at 8:28 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: That earl gray idea sound BLOODY AMAZING.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:32 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


I recently had some honey lemon ricotta ice cream at Swanky Scoop and it was delicious.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:41 AM on July 8, 2022


The best ice cream I've ever had is homemade tonka bean ice cream. Tonka beans are, technically, illegal in the United States due to their coumarin content last I checked, but they're legal in Europe and elsewhere. (Tonka beans are not notably more dangerous than any other spice you shouldn't eat large quantities of, like nutmeg; the amount used in your average baked good or ice cream isn't going to hurt you.) Anyway, if you should find tonka beans that have fallen off the back of a truck--an Amazon truck, perhaps--they make for amazing ice cream.

Also amazing, Persian-style saffron rosewater ice cream. You can probably find many recipes online, but I tweaked a couple of them to my family's taste and stuck the recipe up on my tumblr.
posted by yasaman at 9:48 AM on July 8, 2022


This banana pudding ice cream from The Homesick Texan.

I've also had a strawberry basil ice cream before, and it was so fresh and delicious! I got rid of my ice cream maker before i could make it, so i don't have any recipes to recommend other than the concept.
posted by BlueBear at 10:06 AM on July 8, 2022 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Absolutely do not skip the chocolate sorbet in Lebovitz; it is the fudgiest fudge that ever fudged. Add a heaping teaspoon of instant espresso powder for extra credit, or maybe a shot of bourbon, you know the drill.

Other things to experiment with:
* cookie butter
* freeze dried fruit that you've blitzed in a food processor and/or coffee grinder
* dry milk that you've toasted in a dry skillet until brick red - dulce de leche baby!
posted by misuba at 12:19 PM on July 8, 2022 [3 favorites]


I envy you! I had to give up ice cream making when my arthritic hands couldn't handle the frozen bowl anymore. Your machine sounds wonderful.

This persimmon-black pepper syrup was one of my biggest hits. Persimmons will be coming in to stores around October. I use fuyu persimmons because I have a tree, and it works just as well.

Greg Atkinson's West Coast Cooking has a bunch of great ice cream and sorbet recipes, with one of my favorites being cedar bough sorbet. (I had a life-changing cherry-cedar ginger beer once at a bar, and I could imagine experimenting with the cedar sorbet and some cherry and ginger could produce something really exciting.)

Honey lavender is a tried and true flavor combo, and lavender's in full bloom now. It was my introduction to fancy ice cream, and can be really lovely.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 5:15 PM on July 8, 2022


Saffron Rose Persian style ice cream is very special. Don’t skip the frozen shards of heavy cream mixed in.
posted by Swisstine at 5:19 PM on July 8, 2022


There's a not-great ice cream spot that does a 4C ice cream I think has more potential: chocolate, cherry, coffee, and champagne.
posted by umwelt at 6:32 PM on July 8, 2022


Best answer: Ha, umwelt, you just reminded me of my own 4C ice cream flavor! Coffee, chocolate, cinnamon, and cardamom (sweetened with canela if you can get it!) I made this for the first time in Guatemala where I was able to get everything grown locally. But I've made it since in the states and it is still very good!

I've remembered a few more :) Lavendar blueberry is a combo that I really love. Earl grey is a good addition to this as well.

Last summer I made an elderflower and orange blossom gelato with candied rose petals and lime zest. I served it in a coupe glass and poured gin and sparkling water over it so it melted a bit and foamed. Very decadent!
posted by ananci at 7:10 PM on July 8, 2022


Response by poster: This is one of the most fun threads to read ever. :-)

Quick side question - so, the coffee with peanut butter oreos. My roommate is convinced that the coffee and peanut butter flavor profile would work, but I'm not sold. What do others say to that?

And side note to Kitten Kaboodle (and anyone else who may want to treat themselves now) - this is the machine I got; I've wanted an ice cream maker with an internal freezer for some time, but they all seemed to be either too big or too expensive; this is about the size of a small microwave, and it's not super-pricey. You don't even need to chill the ice cream mix before you pour it into the machine. (Still haven't used it yet, that will be today's adventure.)

....I am also now patting myself on the back for having started that little collection of tea herbs in containers for the community garden next door. No one else really seems to be dipping into it, so I may go nab some of the fresh lavender at some point for an ice cream.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:46 AM on July 9, 2022


Response by poster: OH HEY, the community garden has a big plum tree too if anyone knows of any good ice creams involving plums! There's sorbet, of course, but any others? (Would that nectarine/bourbon recipe work with plums too, do you think?)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:47 AM on July 9, 2022


Best answer: I’ve been regularly making homemade ice cream for about 15 years (I currently have 3 machines), and I definitely encourage you to experiment once you get the hang of things. There are a bunch of different dairy bases: (1) American/Philadelphia-style like Ben & Jerry’s with half cream, half whole milk, plus white sugar and flavoring (good for fruit flavors, not super complex, doesn’t require heating), (2) French/custard-style like Haagen Dazs, with half cream, half milk, and 3-6 egg yolks, plus white sugar and flavoring (rich, nice for vanillas, chocolates, but can be too rich for delicate flavors), (3) Jeni’s base, with cream cheese and cornstarch instead of egg yolks (a bit tangy, richer than Philadelphia-style, good for stronger flavors), (4) a condensed milk base with half cream, half milk, and condensed milk in place of most of the sugar (an easy no-cook ice cream, good for pretty much anything a Philadelphia-style is good for), and then (5) other weird dairy combinations as long as there’s enough fat—here I’m thinking of times when you’ve got really nice fresh fruit, you let it macerate in sugar, then you add enough whole Greek yogurt or sour cream and some cream to get it to thick milkshake consistency.

I often do less cream compared to milk to make it more like gelato, and I do things to help with freezing consistency like adding a pinch of salt, replacing a tablespoon or two of the white sugar with a liquid sugar like corn syrup, and I add either a neutral or flavored liquor. You also need to make sure that the flavoring part doesn’t add too much liquid, or that you account for the liquid by reducing the amount of dairy. Another tip is that the ice cream base needs to taste a little bit too sweet at room temp/heated, since it’ll taste less sweet in ice cream form. (It should taste as sweet as normal melted ice cream.)
posted by loulou718 at 11:09 AM on July 9, 2022 [3 favorites]


Best answer: I don't have specific recipes to offer, but I want to draw attention to the technique of steeping flavorful things in your cream (with an overnight chill before you put in your batch).

My best results on this were using good, dark-roast coffee beans that steeped for half an hour in warm-to-hot cream. Literally the best coffee ice cream I have ever had, just using Ben & Jerry's sweet cream base. (I worked at Haagen-Dazs as a kid and have been an ice cream junkie since birth, and coffee is one of my favorite flavors. This stuff was good.)

But almost anything can be steeped, and it's a great way to get flavors out of foods and into the ice cream -- without the food actually going into the final ice cream itself.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:21 PM on July 9, 2022


I am very excited about this question because my spouse and I are in the process of talking ourselves into and out of getting an ice cream machine of this style.

While I haven't made any of the recipes and so can't vouch for them, I've been intrigued by Wild Sweetness by Thalia Ho because it includes recipes for:
black tahini brittle ice cream
burnt sugar ice cream (with orange zest and grand marnier)
boysenberry frozen yogurt
chocolate cassis ice cream
juniper and white chocolate ice cream
malt and buckwheat ice cream
mulled wine ice cream
peche de vigne sorbet (which she says you could try with plums if you can't find vine peaches)

Also, if you want to try something on the savory line, check out the celery leaf and heart chartreuse sorbet recipe in The Book of Greens by Jenn Louis. (She's also got a recipe for above mentioned pandan ice cream.) Suggested serving: olive oil and dukkah or scoop into a glass of prosecco.
posted by carrioncomfort at 5:18 AM on July 10, 2022


Ooh, I would absolutely do a roasted plum ice cream with crushed almond toffee brittle and candied ginger. I make a tart with that flavor profile, I bet it would make an amazing ice cream.
posted by ananci at 9:36 PM on July 10, 2022


Response by poster: Okay! So I have made the chocolate-with-peanut-butter-oreos-and-peanut-butter-swirl so far - there was an unfortunate machine-overfill incident, but we still got three pints out of the thing and it was delicious and roommate and I both devoured it.

Batch 2 is today - a simpler recipe that will be using up some cherries (cherry ice cream with more chopped cherries and chocolate bits). I also got a gorgeous watermelon from the CSA yesterday and may turn some of that into a sorbet.

I also splurged on three totally different cocoa powder varieties from King Arthur baking company, and I think a lot of them will be going into ice creams and sorbets over the next couple weeks. There's also a little bottle of Fior de Sicilia I'll play with at some point. (Heh; my roommate is going out of town for a week and I think I'll be doing a lot of General Experimenting then; the plums in the block garden plum tree are really starting to come in so I'll play with that as well.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:43 AM on July 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Just came in to mark this "resolved" overall, and to add a link to something I discovered - this sorbet combining cantaloupe and lemon verbena. It is DIVINE, and if I hadn't already taken so much of the existing lemon verbena plant in my community garden for the first batch, I'd be making it again (it only used half a cantaloupe, and I need to figure out what to do with the other half).

Also made an old favorite (chocolate with raspberries) from David Leibovitz's book, and I think plum and raspberry sorbet will be tonight. I also had to cut back all the mints in the community garden, and the garden is having a painting party on some of our infrastructure today, so all the cut-back mint went into a recipe from Jeni's ice cream and I'll be bringing that with a handful of spoons for when we're on a break.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:23 AM on July 31, 2022


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