Jul

Mostly-Organic Gingerbread Ice Cream

Sean Sellers in Organic, Blow the Bank, Desserts Bee Gees, Campbell Soup, food, Hamburger Helper, Ice Cream, KitchenAid, Recipe

InterWined Food
Each week, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week as part of a two-day 4^th of July spectacular, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you a bucket of Mostly-Organic Gingerbread Ice Cream.

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream”. Sure, it’s a cliché; but one look in my freezer will prove that at least the first part’s true. Regardless of the weather or season, when it comes to my culinary affections, ice cream always reigns supreme and leaves me wanting more.

Need proof: on a recent trip to visit my sister in Rome, what was top of my list of things to do? See the Trevi Fountain? Tour the Vatican? Nope; it was find a gelateria. And, yes, I did see the Trevi Fountain and tour the Vatican, lest you think I’m some sort of cultural heathen. It’s just that I did both with a cono of gelato in my hand. (In fact, the best gelato in Rome comes from a gelateria very close the Vatican. Seek it out.)

From Japanese Yukimi Daifuku on the streets of London to a single scoop of vanilla pressed into the top of sugar cone and served my grandmother’s kitchen in a scene ripped for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, I love ice cream. I’ll scream it loud and scream it proud.

The Web is awash with quick and easy recipes for gingerbread ice cream. The problem is most involve simply adding a bit of gingerbread crumbs to some bog-standard brand of ready-made vanilla in a loose and free-wheeling interpretation of the word ‘recipe’ not even worthy of the back of a packet of Hamburger Helper and a Campbell’s Soup tin or whatever other cultural reference implies adding one ready-made food to another and calling it a quick and easy recipe for anything in the name of ‘fast food’. If you really want beef stroganoff and don’t have the time to prepare it, buy it ready made and order it from a restaurant. If that sounds somewhat unforgiving, it’s meant to do.

InterWined is all for quick and easy recipes — few of us have the time for anything else — when quick and easy means simple and straight-forward to prepare. Not fast for the sake of speed. Recipes shouldn’t be fast at the expense of quality or flavour. Without those, there’s little point in following a quick and easy recipe much less eating quick and easy food, outside of staying alive. And I, for one, have never been terribly keen on things that double as songs titles for the Bee Gees. Don’t even get me started on that joke that started the whole world crying. Seriously, how bad did that joke have to be? Can you even call it a joke if all it does it make people cry?

Not-entirely InterWined’s Own Recipe for Mostly-Organic Gingerbread Ice Cream is definitely no joke. Based on a recipe for gingerbread ice cream from KitchenAid, it might not be as fast as some on the Web, but it is certainly quick and easy to prepare without sacrificing flavour or quality. This is premium ice cream made with organic milk and free-range eggs and infused with freshly-baked gingerbread cookies from the start to ensure that the ice cream, not only took on the colour of the cookies, but evenly absorbed the full, rich flavour of the gingerbread. One bite of this and you’ll never do quick and easy ice cream for the sake of quick and easy again.

Not-entirely InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full*

Gingerbread Ice Cream

Ingredients:
You will need an ice cream maker to complete the recipe.
300ml Organic Whole Milk
300ml Double Cream
6 Medium free-range egg yokes
250ml Sugar
4 Gingerbread men
1 Cap-full of gingerbread syrup or flavouring (e.g. Starbuck Coffee-syrup)
Alternative: 600ml Organic Whole Milk, no double cream

Preparation (20 minutes, plus 8 hours):

1. Chop two of the gingerbread men into small pieces and reserve
2. On the hob, heat the milk in a saucepan until hot, but not boiling
3. Slowly stir in the chopped gingerbread and remove from the heat
4. In a bowl, add the sugar, cream, and egg yokes and mix thoroughly for approximately 2 minutes (reduce to 30 seconds, if omitting the double cream)
5. Pour both mixtures into a large container and refrigerate for 8 hours
6. When ready, follow your ice cream machine’s instructions to churn the ice cream
7. Chop the remaining two gingerbread men into small pieces
8. In the final couple of minutes’ churning, add the gingerbread men and the gingerbread syrup
9. Once churned, remove from the machine and serve

* This recipe is based with slight variation on the Gingerbread Ice Cream Recipe included with the KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment.

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Tasting Notes