The Last Dessert(s) Of The Summer

Cardamom ice cream, sundaes, ice cream sandwiches

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Happy Friday!

Right off the bat I want to say how much I love cardamom, my boyfriend would have you believe its an unhealthy obsession and that I want to add cardamom to everything (come to think of it, editors have said the same thing), I would call it a perfectly understandable love affair. To me cardamom is the bakers spice, it pairs beautifully with so many flavours and I love the extra layer of flavour it adds to my baking. It, of course, pairs beautifully with other spices but it also works wonders when added to chocolate recipes, used to roast fruit, added it citrus desserts and I even like it in my coffee. As far as I am concerned it is the king of baking spices and no one can convince me otherwise.

The inspiration for this weeks newsletter came from a recent visit to Brighton. On a surprisingly warm and sunny weekend, we were on the lookout for a good ice cream spot and stumbled across Brass Monkey in The Lanes in Brighton. When it comes to ice cream or gelato spots there are three main things that suggest you're onto a shop that makes high quality frozen treats. Its not a set of strict rules, but it can help you track down something delicious and to avoid dissapointment. First up is a limited menu, this often suggests they concentrate on quality rather than quantity. Second up is that the ice cream should natural in its colour and not at all artificial looking, this means the ingredients are more likely to be natural. And finally the ice cream or gelato should covered or if it's not covered it shouldn’t be in gigantic mountainous piles that seem to defy gravity, this means the ice cream is more likely to be freshly made and not full of stabilisers. When we walked past Brass Monkey, it passed my not so scientific test so, we gave it a go. The gelato was excellent and the cardamom ice cream I had was particularly good, especially if, like me, you cant get enough of the floral and fragrant flavour of cardamom. So I set out to replicate this at home.

Before we get to the recipe I thought it might be useful to talk about the main styles of frozen treats:

French or Custard Style Ice Cream - This is an American term but it generally refers to egg based ice cream

Philadelphia Style Ice Cream - This is ice cream made without eggs

Gelato - Gelato is similar to custard style ice cream but uses more milk and less cream and either less eggs or no eggs at all, resulting in a denser frozen treat.

Sorbet - A frozen treat made with no dairy and no eggs. It is most commonly made with a sugar syrup mixed with a fruit puree or some other flavouring such as chocolate.

Sherbet - very similar to sorbet but it includes some dairy, normally in the form of milk resulting in something a little creamier.

This list is far from complete, it could also include soft serve, kulfi, frozen yoghurt, semifreddo, dondurma and the list goes on, but that is for another day.

When it comes to ice cream what role does each ingredient play? The cream and milk give us milk protein which is responsible for creamy textures and a rich flavour and mouth feel. The sugar is of course for sweetness but also for the texture, sugar doesn’t freeze so the more sugar in a recipe the softer the ice cream stays once frozen, the lower the sugar level the larger the ice crystals in the ice cream will be. The egg yolks, which are made up of water, fat and protein, act as a natural emulsifier, because they also contain lecithin, creating a silky smooth ice cream. This emulsifying quality also means ice creams made with yolks hold their shape better and don’t melt quite as quickly (in commerical ice creams yolks are often replaced with industrial style emulsifiers and gums to do the job of yolks but do it for less money).

Todays base recipe is a classic custard style ice cream, flavoured with cardamom. The base is in fact my go to recipe I have used for years. The main addition here is the addition of cardamom to give the ice cream additional flavour, this is done via a method called infusion.

Infusion

When you are infusing a flavour into a base (in this case a mix of milk and cream) you have two options, hot or cold infusion. Probably self explanatory but, hot infusion is where the item to be infused into the base is added to the base which is then heated, once at a simmer or a boil it is removed from the heat, covered, and set aside to infuse for a period of time (an hour is a common timeline for this). Cold infusion is where the item to be infused into the base is added to the base whilst cold and left in the fridge for a prolonged period of time to slowly infuse the flavour.

The choice of which method you choose generally comes down to what you're trying to infuse and how delicate or fresh the flavour is. A general rule is to use cold infusion when the product is delicate or has a more gentle, or complex flavour, like soft herbs, tea or anything more delicate where heat might destroy the flavour compounds. Hot infusion works well for big bold flavours like woody herbs, coffee and for dried ingredients, which need heat to properly release their flavour. There is no hard and fast rules to which method you should use and in some cases both will work, but you may get a different result depending on the method you choose.

In this case, I find a hot infusion works best for cardamom, the heat draws out the flavour from the hard seeds and allows the cream to soak up as much flavour from as possible.

Ice Cream Machines

Before we get to the recipe one last word, this time on ice cream machines. There are two main types on the market for home cooks, those which need pre freezing and those with in-built condensers which can be used without any prior preparation. Those that need pre-freezing are significantly cheaper but still work wonders. The downside os these machines is you need a large freezer for the vessel to be frozen before use, and they can only be used once before they need to be re-frozen. The condenser models more closely resemble a professional ice cream machine in that you simply plug them in and they’re ready to go, you can also use them continuously to make multiple batches of ice cream one after the other. The downsides are these machines are that they are expensive and much larger than the pre-freeze models. In the end it really comes down to how often you want to make ice cream and how much money you want to spend on the machine. You can of course make ice cream without a machine, using the very popular no churn method. This style of ice cream uses a mix of condensed milk and cream whipped lightly together before being poured into a container to be frozen. The combination of the two ingredients keeps the frozen ice cream soft and scoopable. If you want to make this ice cream without making a custard base you could easily infuse the cardamom into the cream in a no churn recipe and make it into a simple no churn ice cream.

To the recipe - you’ll see that I have written up the recipe for the ice cream along with the elements you need to make a simple cardamom plum sundae, a celebration of the end of summer. This ice cream also makes for an exceptional adffogato, the combination of coffee and cardamom being a particular favourite of mine. For paid subscribers, at the bottom of this mammoth post, you’ll find another recipe using the ice cream; Cardamom Ice Cream Brown Butter Blondie Ice Cream Sandwiches with an Espresso Glaze.

Cardamom Ice Cream

300ml whole milk

450ml double cream

Seeds from 6 cardamom pods, finely crushed

1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean)

125g caster sugar

6 large egg yolks

Pinch of fine sea salt

Roasted Plums

4 red plums

1 tbsp honey

1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste

Juice of 1/2 an orange

1/8th tsp fennel seeds, lightly ground

For the Sundae (to serve 4)

150ml double cream, lightly whipped (maybe with a little amaretto added)

1x batch roasted plums

1x batch cardamom ice cream

50g toasted nuts, roughly chopped

Before you start the making the ice cream you need to make sure, that if you are using a pre-freeze ice cream machine, the chilled vessel is in the freezer at least 24 hours before you plan on churning the ice cream. I also find that the older those models get, the longer they need freezing before they’re ready to make ice cream, so to be safe get it in the freezer as soon as you can. If you’re using a machine with an in built condenser you have nothing to prepare.

To make the ice cream we first need to infuse the dairy with the cardamom and vanilla. Add the milk and cream to a saucepan. Add the finely crushed cardamom seeds and the vanilla bean paste, or the seeds from the pod if using. If you use a real vanilla pod you can add the actual pod as well as the scrapings as there is still plenty of flavour in the pod itself, even after the seeds have been scraped out. Place the pan over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Once at temperature add a lid to the pan and turn off the heat. Set the pan aside for an hour to allow the mixture to infuse.

To make the ice cream base place the pan back on a medium heat, add half of the sugar, and bring back to a simmer. Meanwhile add the egg yolks and the remaining sugar and the salt to a large bowl and whisk together to combine, mixing until the mixture is pale. Once the cream mixture is at temperature pour it slowly into the yolk mixture, whisking as you pour to prevent the yolks from cooking. This slow introduction of a hot liquid to eggs is known as tempering, it enables the yolks to increase significantly in temperature without turning them into scrambled egg.

Pour the custard back into the saucepan and place over low heat. At this point we need to cook the custard until it reaches 80ºC. To do this without the custard turning lumpy you need to stir the custard constantly. I find it best to do this with heatproof spatula, which makes it easier to scrape the bottom of the pan compared to a rounded wooden spoon. To test the mixture is fully cooked you can do the traditional test of thickening the custard until it coats the back of a spoon I.e. you should be able to draw you finger through the custard on the back of the spoon and it should hold a clear line. Personally I prefer to use temperature, as its clearer and less faffy (is daffy a word? Probably not but I’m sure you know what I mean), so I use an instant read probe thermometer and when the custard reaches 80ºC, I pull it from the heat and immediately pour it into a clean container.

Once the custard is made you need to cool it down, for two reasons. Firstly you want to cool it down so that the custard can be churned and secondly you want to cool it quickly for basic food safety reasons. The easiest way to cool the custard is to place the container of custard into a bowl of ice water and stir the custard until cooled and then refrigerate the custard until thoroughly chilled. Once the custard is cold you can technically churn the ice cream straight away but it advisable to rest the base for 12 hours or so before you do so. This prolonged rest period does a few things, firstly colder custard will turn into ice cream quicker meaning small ice crystals and a smoother tasting ice cream. Because I leave the vanilla pod and cardamom in the ice cream base it’s also a second stage at which the flavours can be infused into the base leading to a stronger tasting ice cream. Before you churn the ice cream you can remove the vanilla pod and if you want the smoothest tasting ice cream pass the custard through a sieve to remove any larger pieces of cardamom.

If you are using an ice cream machine with an in built condenser, at this point I like to have it set up and running. This will go against the instruction manual for most models of machine but I find some are slower to cool down than they’re supposed to, so letting the machine run for 10 minutes whilst empty means that when you pour in the custard, it will churn much faster. If using a pre-freeze model you only need to turn the machine on when you’re ready to pour in the custard as they’ll already be very cold.

Once your ice cream machine of choice is set up, running and ready to use, pour in the base and leave it to do its thing, you should have a scoopable texture within 20 minutes. You are looking for something akin to the texture of soft serve ice cream. Once at that stage you want to scrape the soft ice cream into a container, seal, and transfer to the frreezer. At this stage it will take a couple hours to fully freeze, I find it best to leave the ice cream overnight. Once frozen the ice cream will keep well for a couple of weeks. Because homemade ice cream is made with simple ingredients and without any stabilisers it wont last as long as shop bought versions so to ensure you enjoy it at its best flavour and texture eat it within two weeks.

Roasted Plums

To make the roasted plums, cut the plums in half and remove the stone. Cut each half into quarters and scatter onto a small rimmed baking tray. Drizzle over the honey, vanilla and orange juice and sprinkle with a little salt. If using the fennel seeds sprinkle these on as well. With this recipe you can add any spices you like and I love the touch of aniseed you get from either fennel or star anise but plums also go wonderfully with spices like cinnamon and cloves.

With the oven set to 190ºC (170ºC Fan) roast the fruit for about 20 minutes or until the fruit is softened and just starting to break down but removing from the heat well before the fruit turns to mush. You want to end up with distinct slices of plum, not a compote like texture. Scrape the fruit and the juice into a small container and refrigerate until needed. You can also use these roasted plums whilst still hot if you prefer a contrast of temperature in your sundae.

Sundae

To assemble your sundae you want to layer up all of your elements, a couple scoops of ice cream layered with a generous serving of the roasted plums, a good dollop or two of whipped cream and a scattering of toasted nuts. The nice thing about a sundae is that they are completely adaptable to your taste. Traditionally a sundae is ice cream, a sauce and toppings. That is such a loose framework that you can really make whatever sundae you fancy, in this sundae for example the roasted fruit acts as both sauce and topping with nuts for additional texture and flavour.

IF YOU WANT THE RECIPE FOR ‘BROWN BUTTER BLONDIE ICE CREAM SANDWICHES WITH A COFFEE WHITE CHOCOLATE GLAZE’, YOU’LL FIND IT BELOW FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS