One of my all time favourite ice creams is the Peanut butter ice cream from the Creamery. It’s slightly salty and almost crumbly because of how much peanut butter they use. It’s delicious.
So I decided to make my own. I didn’t have a recipe for this so this is my fumbling-around-in-the-dark-recipe but it came out very well.
First I figured I’d make some peanut butter. The shop only had roasted and salted peanuts so I rinsed off the excessive salt, pat dried them, and put them under the grill for a few minutes to toast and warm the peanuts all the way through.
Next I popped them into a blender and blended them till a fine paste. The trick is to keep scraping the peanut pulp off the sides. Once the bits get finer, the mixing goes quicker.
Taste it. I added a little lemon salt, to give it more of a freshness to it.
The second big step is making the ice cream. My staple ice cream recipe goes like this: 2 cups cream, 1 cup milk, 1/2 cup sugar, and 4 egg yolks. The thing is that the more fat there is in your ice cream, the longer the taste will stay in your mouth. So a rule of thumb is the richer your flavouring, the less fat you want in your ice cream or after 2 scoops you’ll be over it, and want a nice cold glass of lemon water.
Also, I didn’t know how much of my peanut butter to add to the custard. This is the ratio I found worked:
- 1.5 cups cream
- 1.5 cups milk
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 4 egg yolks
Mix everything together in a bowl and strain out any bits of egg. Place it on a low heat and stir constantly. You only need to stir until the custard thickens slightly. Don’t overcook or the eggs will scramble, and there’s little coming back from that.
After that, let the custard cool. Give it a taste, and add any sugar or salt you think it needs. Once cooled, it’s a good idea to ‘age’ your custard for at least 8 hours in the fridge. This will give your ice cream a more luxurious consistency. Pop it into your ice cream churner until it’s the consistency you want. If you don’t have an ice cream machine/churner you could always do this.
I hope you try this out and let me know what you think – as always comments are welcomed and encouraged. Enjoy!