After coming across speculoos spread in Belgium I have been obsessed! This ice cream is gorgeous and creamy, packed with speculoos spices, and of course I swirled some speculoos spread through the finished product. I hope you enjoy this recipe!
Recipe adapted from: Three Bears Melbourne
Ingredients
330mL milk
1 vanilla pod, split
4 cm length of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced finely
5 whole cloves
1 cardamom pod
200g dark brown sugar
200mL pure cream (not thickened with gelatine)
4 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla essence
Speculoos spice
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
Approx. 3/4 cup speculoos spread (a.k.a. speculaas, Biscoff, cookie butter) - for swirling into the ice cream
Method
1. Heat milk until just above body temperature, ensuring that it does not boil. I did this in the microwave but you can use a saucepan on the stove if you like.
2. Add the vanilla pod, sliced ginger, cloves and cardamom pod to the milk. (I didn't have a vanilla or cardamom pod on hand so I just used the fresh ginger and the whole cloves). Let the mixture infuse for 30-45 minutes.
3. When the milk is nearly done infusing, combine the brown sugar and cream in a medium saucepan. Heat the mixture over a medium heat and stir until the sugar has melted. When the mixture is smooth, remove it from the heat.
4. Strain the milk to remove the spices, and whisk the egg yolks in.
5. Whisking constantly, slowly pour the milk mixture into the sugar and cream mixture. The constant whisking is to prevent the egg yolks from cooking.
6. Return the mixture to medium heat and cook until it starts to thicken, about 10 minutes. The mixture should coat the back of a spatula/wooden spoon.
7. Remove the thickened mixture from the heat and stir the vanilla essence in.
8. Set the mixture aside to cool down to room temperature.
9. Add the dry speculoos spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and cardamom) to the cooled mixture, stir until combined. You can taste test at this point and add more spices to suit your tastes if you like!
10. Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and churn as per the manufacturer's instructions. I churned mine for about 30 minutes.
(If you don't have an ice cream maker, pour the mixture into a freezer-safe container and freeze for about 4 hours. When almost fully set, take the ice cream out of the freezer and beat with an electric mixer until fluffy, then put back into the freezer. You can do this another time after a few more hours of freezing if the ice cream is not set enough.)
11. With a knife or spatula, stir bite sized amounts of speculoos spread through the ice cream. When frozen, the speculoos is really hard so make sure that the chunks aren't too big!
12. Decant the ice cream into a bucket or tin and place in the freezer to set fully.
Enjoy!
This gelato is so smooth and creamy that I was amazed it was something I made at home, rather than a high-quality gelati store creation. My grandfather was in raptures about it.
It's a custard-based recipe so there're egg yolks and stove-top cooking involved, plus lots and lots of Nutella.
Recipe adapted from: Leave Room For Dessert
Ingredients
500mL cream
500mL milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
300g caster sugar, split into two 150g portions
5 egg yolks
300g (or more!) Nutella
Method
1. In a saucepan, heat the cream, milk, vanilla essence and 150g caster sugar over medium heat. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved.
2. Just before the mixture starts to boil, remove it from the heat.
3. Beat the egg yolks with the other 150g portion of caster sugar until the mixture is thick and pale.
4. Whisk the egg yolk mixture into the cream mixture and heat it again, over low heat, stirring constantly. Keep heating it until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
5. When the mixture's thickened, stir the Nutella in until everything's combined.
6. Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer's instructions (I used my Cuisinart freezer-bowl ice cream maker). Alternatively, you can pour this into a shallow brownie tin and put it in the freezer, taking it out every couple of hours and beating it to ensure that it's smooth.
Enjoy!
Ever since my mother requested that I make cake batter ice cream, I'd been on the lookout for a perfect recipe. Every one I came across either used boxed cake mix, milk powder or some other ingredient that wasn't readily available to me. Then I came across a recipe that didn't need any out-of-the-ordinary ingredients and was super simple to make!
Let me tell you, it is perfect. It tastes just like cake batter, and has an amazing creamy texture. Just be aware that this dessert features raw eggs, so if that's something you want to avoid, unfortunately this recipe is not the one for you. I figured that with the amount of cake batter and cookie dough I've eaten in my lifetime (a lot), some more raw eggs would not do any more damage (thankfully, they didn't)!
Recipe adapted from: Foods of Our Lives
Ingredients
375mL thickened cream
250mL milk
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
115g flour
185g white sugar
Method
1. Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Sifting the flour may help with lumps, but the few small lumps I found in the blended mixture were not noticeable in my finished ice cream.
2. Pour into an ice cream maker and churn according to your maker's instructions. I did mine for about 30 minutes. (I have a Cuisinart 2L ice cream maker of the freezer-bowl variety).
3. Once the ice cream is done churning and you are happy with the consistency, transfer it to a receptacle of your choice and put it in the freezer. Alternatively, serve it straight away.
Enjoy! I hope you love this as much as I did!
Next mission: gingerbread ice cream...
Hello, and I hope you're ready to meet the newest addition to our kitchen. After much um-ing and ah-ing, in which Mum made a batch of delicious chocolate sorbet and we all became frustrated with the time it took to chill (HOURS), we traipsed down to the shops to get a thing.
The thing is a Cuisinart ice cream maker, which I have dubbed 'Rotato', because I like to name things. And the bowl rotates. It all makes sense in my head.
From what I've gathered, there are two types of ice cream makers - the ones with a refrigeration unit inside that cools the ice cream mixture as it churns it without the need to refrigerate anything separately, and those that are basically churners with bowls that you have to freeze beforehand. This particular ice cream maker is the freezy-bowl variety. The bowl is double insulated with liquid within, and you have to keep it in the freezer until the liquid is completely frozen. Then tip your ice cream mixture in, churn for about 25 minutes, and voila! Ice cream!
Of course, we had to test it out as soon as the bowl was properly frozen, so Mum made another batch of the chocolate sorbet. This is seriously good stuff; it's intensely chocolatey, rich and smooth. It's also dairy-free and egg-free as well! If you don't like chocolate ice cream but you love chocolate, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll like this sorbet.
Recipe adapted from: David Lebovitz via food52
Ingredients
555mL water (divided into 375mL and 180mL portions)
200g white sugar
75g cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
185g dark chocolate
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Method
1. In a saucepan, whisk 375mL of the water with the white sugar, cocoa powder and salt.
2. Let the mixture come to the boil, whisking frequently. It'll boil pretty aggressively because it's a sugar syrup with more stuff added in, and boiling sugar syrup gets mad, yo.
3. Boil and whisk for about 45 seconds then remove from the heat.
4. If your chocolate comes in a block, chop it up until it's in little choc chip sized pieces. Add the chocolate to the sugar mixture and stir until it's melted and combined.
5. Stir the remaining water and vanilla extract into your mixture.
6. Blend the mixture in a blender for about 20 seconds. We used a stick (handheld) blender just in the saucepan and that worked well.
7. Let the mixture chill. If you want this done quickly, pour it into a brownie pan to maximise surface area and pop the pan into an ice bath.
8. Once the mixture is cold, pour it into your ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer's instructions. We did it for 25 minutes but we could have gone longer for a firmer sorbet.
If you don't have an ice cream maker, freeze the mixture in the freezer and take it out every now and then and beat it with the paddle attachment on a stand mixer. This mimics the churning of an ice cream machine and breaks up the ice crystals - your finished product won't be as smooth and it will take a long time to get the sorbet to the right consistency, but it's still good.
After 25 minutes of churning, the sorbet was soft-serve consistency straight out of the ice cream maker.
When decanted into a container and frozen for longer, the sorbet reaches a scoopable consistency.
PERFECTION.
When I first tried Ben & Jerry's ice cream, I was immediately drawn to the Choc Chip Cookie Dough flavour because cookie dough is one of my favourite things. Personally, I felt that Ben & Jerry's version didn't have nearly enough cookie dough and I dislike having chocolate chips in ice cream. So I decided to make my own version.
To make Cookie Dough Ice Cream at home, all you need is this cookie recipe without the bicarb soda (you can use chocolate chips or leave them out, your pick!) and a tub of vanilla ice cream.
Method
1. Leave your ice cream out of the freezer so that it goes soft and a bit runny.
2. Meanwhile, make your cookie dough.
3. Roll the dough into balls of whatever size you'd like (I usually make a variety of sizes, but not bigger than a tablespoon) and put them in the freezer to harden.
4. Pour the ice cream into the bowl of your electric mixer. You can mix by hand, but I prefer to use my Kitchenaid with the K beater attachment so I get flecks of cookie dough throughout the ice cream.
5. With the mixer on slow, throw the frozen cookie dough in a few at a time until all of them are incorporated.
6. Pour the finished ice cream into a container, making sure that the cookie dough balls are evenly dispersed throughout.
7. Leave to set in the freezer.
8. Consume with joy.
