Gingerbread ice cream - Christmas special
By: 
 
My friend Lena's gingerbread ice cream actually tastes more profoundly of gingerbread than most gingerbread cookies do: A clear treat for any lover of the traditional sweet Christmas speciality!
Ingredients
  • 250 ml (1 cup) whole milk
  • 250 ml (1 cup) cream
  • 2 cloves
  • 1 teaspoon sodium bicarbonate (alternatively, 2 teaspoons baking powder)
  • 1 tsk (dried) bitter orange peel
  • 1-2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger
  • 1½ cinnamon stick
  • 100 ml (about 0.4 cup) golden syrup
  • 100 ml (about 0.4 cup) sugar
  • 5-6 egg yolks
Instructions
  1. Put together the spices, the bicarbonate/baking powder, the golden syrup and the milk and cream in a saucepan. Bring to an almost-boil and simmer for about five minutes. Take off from the heat and let cool down somewhat (note - just a little; it needs to be fairly hot for the next step anyway).
  2. Now, whisk together the sugar and the egg yolks in a bowl.
  3. Then, carefully and while whisking, start to drizzle in - little by little - the fairly hot dairy mixture (the 'tempering stage').
  4. Return the resulting ice cream base to the stove: on low-medium heat, and while constantly stirring with a spatula, bring it up to about 82-85º Celsius/179-185º F (Some would settle already for a temperature in the region of 77-82º C/170-179º F, although this depends on how thoroughly you want to pasteurise your ice cream base). If you do not have a thermometer, the rule of thumb according to the "Spoon-test" will be when you can trace a line on the back of your spoon (or spatula) which stays.
  5. Take off from the heat and pass the base through a sieve, sieving off remaining pieces of the spices.
  6. Cool down the ice cream base as quickly as possible. When cool, put the base in the refrigerator to chill, preferably over night and at least for a few hours.
  7. When thoroughly chilled, pour the ice cream base into your ice cream machine and churn according to its instructions. Or still-freeze your ice cream, using only your freezer (see the special post on the website about making ice cream without ice cream machine).
  8. Finally, pour the churned ice cream into a freezer-proof container, cover with plastic film, put on a lid and set to freeze in your freezer (unless you want to eat the ice cream immediately ;-) )
Notes
For stronger flavour (but this recipe already packs quite a punch, so be careful), leave the spices to infuse further during the cooling down/chilling down phase: only sieve them off when it is time to churn the base.
You may also lightly crush the spices before adding them to the base in the first place. And remember - go easy on the bitter orange peel!
Recipe by ICE CREAM NATION at https://www.icecreamnation.org/2013/12/gingerbread-ice-cream-xmas/