On Sunday before I made this ice cream, I saw that there was a heat advisory through Wednesday. By Thursday (when I originally started writing this post), they re-extended the EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING to Saturday!
That’s a full week of excessive heat. We finished off the Brown Sugar and Toasted Almond Ice Cream earlier in the week, and I decided that I had to make another batch of ice cream, even if I couldn’t eat it immediately because it needed to firm up rather than be the slush that my ice cream maker produces.
I found the recipe for Blueberry Cinnamon Swirl Ice Cream on eatingwell.com. I was very excited to find a recipe for ice cream that I could make from everything I had at home. Of course, my pantry is particularly well stocked, but the only two things that a normal pantry might not have were gelatin and sweetened condensed milk (and a vanilla bean, but you could substitute vanilla extract for that). I was thrilled to find a recipe that didn’t call for heavy cream, which would have required me to make a special trip to the store.
The custard came together pretty easily. In fact, the method of this recipe was pretty similar to the earlier ice cream recipe. You soften gelatin; heat part of the milk with the vanilla bean to extract vanilla flavor; gradually stir milk into the egg yolks and sweetened condensed milk; then return the mixture to the pan to cook. I had my heat right (spot-on medium), so my custard was ready before 5 minutes were up. After you remove the custard from heat, you mix in the gelatin until it melts, and add the rest of the milk. Then the custard goes into the fridge to cool for at least 2 hours.
You put the ice cream custard in the ice cream maker and make it according to the machine’s instructions. You add blueberries during the last 5 minutes of freezing time. My ice cream was still slush, but it wasn’t going to get any more frozen. I basically just wanted the berries to mix into the ice cream thoroughly, and I was afraid that if I stopped the mixer and stirred them in with a spoon the ice cream slush might start to melt.
I (or rather, Alex, since I went to bed right after this) put it in a container and froze it a while before we ate it.
This was really good. The sweetened condensed milk, combined with the cinnamon, reminded me of honey. [Actually, as I eat it now, it reminds me some of the Breyer’s Fried Ice Cream; mine isn’t low calorie, but at least it doesn’t have a whole bunch of preservatives in it. Maybe it’s just the cinnamon that makes me think of this.] This had a good, creamy texture, and the frozen blueberries were a lot of fun to eat, but I think it would be good with other items in it as well. I would make this again.
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