Description
When you want something beyond vanilla, try cinnamon ice-cream. It’s delicious on its own and works great as a topping for peach cobblers in summer or apple pies and gingerbread in the fall.
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 cup whole milk
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 10 cinnamon sticks (about 3 inches long each), broken up in a mortar and pestle or with a hammer in a ziptop bag
- 2 cups heavy cream, divided
- 5 large egg yolks
- Ground cinnamon, optional
Instructions
- Steep milk. Heat the milk, sugar, salt, cinnamon sticks, and 1 cup heavy cream together in a medium saucepan until sugar is dissolved and mixture just begins to simmer. Stir the mixture as it is heating up to keep the milk from burning. Remove milk mixture from heat, cover, and let steep 1 hour.
- Remove cinnamon sticks. Rewarm the milk mixture until just steaming, then remove the larger pieces of cinnamon sticks with a slotted spoon. Don’t worry about the smaller pieces since they’ll get strained out later.
- Make custard base. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Gradually add some of the warm milk mixture to the yolks, whisking constantly. Continue slowly adding the hot milk to the eggs until you have added about half the milk mixture. Pour the warmed yolks back into the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heatproof spatula, until the custard thickens and coats the spatula.
- Strain. Remove from heat and immediately strain the custard through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean bowl. Place the bowl in a larger bowl partially filled with ice water, being careful not to get any water in the custard. Whisk in remaining 1 cup of cream. Stir custard occasionally until mixture is cool.
- Chill. Cover the custard with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, preferably overnight.
- Freeze. When ready to churn the ice-cream, taste the custard and add a bit of ground cinnamon, if desired. Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Then, transfer the ice-cream to a freezer-safe container, cover and freeze until firm, 3 to 4 hours, before serving.
Notes
- Recipe adapted from David Lebovitz.
