Backyard Mint Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Freckles

My first time making an ice cream based on Jeni's eggless ice cream recipes was this Peppermint Ice Cream with Peppermint Candy and Dark Chocolate.  The idea was a good one, but I wasn't very impressed with the outcome.  It didn't stop me from trying out her other recipes, though, or adapting them, and I can definitely say that I'm a happy convert to her eggless homemade ice cream recipes.

So when Paula gave me that bag of fresh picked mint from her backyard, I knew I wanted to try making Jeni's Backyard Mint Ice Cream.  I've had the fresh mint ice cream from Toscanini's before, so I was pretty sure I knew what to expect:  a slightly more herbal, even grassy, pure mint ice cream.  And I decided I'd try to add some "dark chocolate freckles", which are basically made by streaming melted chocolate into the churning ice cream.  I've kind of shied away from trying this because even though my ice cream maker has it's own condenser (so I don't have to worry about the ice cream base melting while churning), the opening for add-ins is not that easy to access.  This is probably the only complaint I have about my Lello gelato maker.

Backyard Mint Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Freckles (from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home)
makes about 1 quart

2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 ½ ounces (3 tablespoons) cream cheese, softened
1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 ¼ cups heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
A large handful of fresh mint from your backyard or a farmers' market, leaves roughly torn into small pieces
4 oz. dark chocolate, chopped

Mix about 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl to make a smooth slurry. Whisk the cream cheese and salt in a medium bowl until smooth. Fill a large bowl with ice and water.

Combine the remaining milk, the cream, sugar, and corn syrup in a 4-quart saucepan, bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat, and boil for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat, and gradually whisk in the cornstarch slurry.

Bring the mixture back to a boil over medium-high heat and cook, stirring with a heatproof spatula, until slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Remove from heat.

Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese until smooth. Add the mint. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bag and submerge the sealed bag in the ice bath. Let stand, adding more ice as necessary, until cold, about 30 minutes.

Refrigerate to steep for 4-12 hours.

Strain out the mint. Pour ice cream base into the frozen canister of your ice cream maker and begin to spin the ice cream.

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in a double boiler.  Remove from the heat and let cool until tepid but still fluid.

When the ice cream is thick and creamy and almost finished, drizzle the melted chocolate slowly through the opening in the top of the ice cream machine and allow it to solidify and break up in the ice cream for about 2 minutes.

Pack the ice cream into a storage container, press a sheet of parchment directly against the surface, and seal with an airtight lid. Freeze in the coldest part of your freezer until firm, at least 4 hours.

As you can see in the picture above, the chocolate hardens into small, amorphous flecks, but what you can't see is how thin and crispy the chocolate is.  It's exactly like eating an After Eight mint and just as addicting.  It's so good I willfully ignore the pain each bite causes my sensitive teeth.  I may or may not have stood at my kitchen counter, scooping this ice cream straight from the tub into my mouth.  I think it's the first ice cream I've made in a long time that I will finish all by myself!  ^_^

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Vanilla Sugar Lemonade and Mint Lemonade Slushies

I had my mac and cheese post all ready to go, but it's just way too hot today to think about turning on the oven or the stove.  So here's another post I've been working on that seems a better match for today's weather.

A couple of weeks ago, Food52 posted a video to show how to make The Best Lemonade You've Ever Had.  Strangely, there was no recipe attached, just a method involving rubbing the lemons in the sugar to scent them before making a simple syrup out of the sugar.  You had to dig into the comments to find that they recommend using equal volumes of lemon juice and simple syrup and that the simple syrup was made with equal volumes of the lemon scented sugar and water.

I tried the method, and on a whim, decided to use vanilla sugar* instead of plain sugar.  Wow.  This was definitely the best lemonade I had ever had.  It's been over a week since I made it, and I've made it several times since then, but I still can't put into words what makes it so great.  The vanilla just elevates the lemonade to another level but in a subtle, understated way.

Vanilla Sugar Lemonade (adapted from Food52)
makes 4 servings

2 large organic lemons, washed and dried
1/2 cup vanilla sugar*
Water

Place the sugar in a wide bowl.  One at a time, rub the outside of the lemons with the vanilla sugar.  Wipe off any sugar that remains on the lemons back into the bowl.

Roll the lemons on a hard surface to make juicing easier.  Slice the lemons in half and juice into a measuring cup.  I was able to get a little more than half a cup of juice.

Add more sugar if you want to match the volume of lemon juice.  Add an equal volume of hot water to the sugar and stir until dissolved to make a simple syrup.

Add the lemon juice and simple syrup to a pitcher or bottle.  Dilute with enough cold water to taste.  I add about 4 parts cold water to 1 part lemon juice/simple syrup solution.  It's still just the tiniest bit too strong for me to drink straight up but perfect once you add a few cubes of ice.  =)

*To make the vanilla sugar, I've been adding the spent vanilla bean pods to an air-tight container of sugar every time I make something that uses fresh vanilla beans.  After letting it sit there for a few days, the sugar absorbs the scent of the vanilla and becomes vanilla sugar!  You can use it in just about anything sweet:  cookies, cakes, ice cream, etc.

Then a couple of days ago I get a text from my friend Paula asking me if I wanted any of the mint she and her family had just picked from their backyard!  I immediately accepted even though I wasn't sure what I would do with it yet.  Then when I was making my third batch of lemonade in probably as many days, I started wondering if maybe I could rub the mint with the sugar and add some mint flavor to the lemonade that way.

So after rubbing the lemons in the sugar, I dropped in a handful of mint leaves and rubbed those all around.  I left the leaves in the sugar while pouring the hot water in and let it steep for a bit before straining out the leaves.  I found that I was able to extract a lot of the mint flavor this way without having to leave the mint leaves in the actual lemonade.  And if you really like the taste of mint, I'd recommend tearing the mint leaves up before adding them to the sugar to release even more oils.

To take it one step further, I decided to blend the mint lemonade with some ice to make a mint lemonade slushie, inspired by Ilene's post.

Yisss.....

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