Authors: David Lebovitz
Ready for Dessert (27 page)
The pudding can be served warm or cold. Spoon it into individual serving dishes and top with toasted coconut.
SERVING:
A simple compote of fresh tropical fruit, such as cubes of banana, mangoes, papayas, and pineapple, tossed in brown sugar, is a perfect accompaniment to the pudding.
STORAGE:
Tapioca pudding will keep for 3 days in the refrigerator.
TIP:
Small pearl tapioca can be found in Asian markets along with Thai coconut milk, which is also available in well-stocked supermarkets.
No-Machine Chocolate-Banana Ice Cream
White Chocolate-Ginger Ice Cream with Chocolate Covered Peanuts
Fresh Mint Sherbet with Figs Roasted in Chartreuse and Honey
Passion Fruit-Tangerine Sorbet
Margarita Sorbet with Salted Peanut Crisps
Pink Grapefruit-Champagne Sorbet Cocktail
White Nectarine Sorbet with Blackberries in Five-Spice Cookie Cups
Anise-Orange Ice Cream Profiteroles with Chocolate Sauce
Berries Romanoff with Frozen Sour Cream
Frozen Caramel Mousse with Sherry-Glazed Pears, Chocolate, and Salted Almonds
Frozen Sabayon with Blood Orange Soup
Kiwifruit, Pineapple, and Toasted Coconut Baked Alaska
I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like ice cream,
so I felt it was my duty to write a book,
The Perfect Scoop,
filled with recipes for frozen desserts of all kinds, as well as mix-ins, sauces, and accompaniments. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the avalanche of feedback that I received from devout ice cream makers all over the world who churn up their own delights at home.
Working in professional kitchens for many years, I was fortunate to have access to top-quality equipment that made churning ice cream a breeze. Nowadays, ice cream machines for the home kitchen are affordably priced, so the only reason
not
to start churning out homemade ice cream is that once you start, you’ll find it hard to stop!
Most ice creams are custard based, meaning the base mixture is made of eggs and dairy cooked gently on the stove top. It’s quite easy to do, but be sure to prepare everything in advance before you start cooking. As the first step, read the recipe completely through and have all your equipment and ingredients ready. Once done, the custard should be cooled over an ice bath: fill a large bowl or your sink with ice and a small amount of water and set the bowl of hot custard in it to help cool it down quickly.
Sorbets and sherbets are ice cream’s leaner cousins whose tastes rely on fresh fruits and flavorful liquids such as wine and coconut milk. Sorbets don’t contain any dairy and eggs; most sherbets are made with a pour of milk that lends a touch of richness.
Some sorbets contain alcohol to keep them soft and scoopable when frozen, although sometimes the alcohol is there for flavor. If you’re serving sorbets or ice creams to kids, or to people who are avoiding alcohol, in many cases you simply can omit the alcohol. The exceptions are those sorbets like the
Sangria Sorbet
that uses wine as a base, and the
No-Machine Chocolate-Banana Ice Cream
that relies on liquor for its texture since it isn’t churned.
For those of you poor souls without ice cream makers, don’t skip over this chapter: I’ve included a few desserts that don’t require a machine, such as a
frozen mousse
and a
frozen wine-based sabayon
. Both are so soft and creamy, and so utterly ethereal, that even if you have a machine, you should give them a spin.
LET IT CHILL:
Ice cream, sorbet, gelato, and sherbet churn up much better—and faster—if the mixture is cold when it’s poured into the ice cream machine. In ice cream recipes, I hold back part of the dairy and strain the custard into it, then chill the mixture over an ice bath to really speed things up.
A thoroughly chilled mixture spends a minimum amount of time churning in the machine. The shorter the churning time, the smaller the ice crystals, and the smoother the final texture will be. So, for best results, I recommend chilling all ice cream, sorbet, gelato, and sherbet mixtures for at least 8 hours, or, better yet, overnight before churning.
MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART (1 LITER)
This is the vanilla ice cream recipe that I’ve been using for over three decades, and I’ve not found one better. Some ask why I choose to use both vanilla extract and a bean. While I love the taste that the bean infuses into the custard, I find that a little extract boosts and brightens the vanilla flavor tremendously, so I use both.
You can use any kind of vanilla you prefer: Bourbon is the strongest, Tahitian is more floral, or real Mexican (not the cheap stuff), which is a revelation if you haven’t had it.
1 cup (250 ml) whole milk
Pinch of salt
¾ cups (150 g) sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 cups (500 ml) heavy cream
5 large egg yolks
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
In a medium saucepan, warm the milk, salt, and sugar, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and add them to the saucepan, then drop in the pod. Cover, remove from the heat, and let steep for 30 minutes.
Pour the cream into a medium bowl and set a mesh strainer across the top.
Reheat the milk mixture until it’s warm. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks, then gradually add some of the warm milk mixture, whisking constantly as you pour. Pour the warmed yolks back into the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan with a heatproof spatula, until the custard is thick enough to coat the spatula. Pour the custard through the mesh strainer into the heavy cream. Rinse the vanilla pod and return it to the custard to continue steeping; stir in the vanilla extract.
Set the bowl containing the custard over a larger bowl of ice water. Stir the custard until cool, then cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.
Remove the
vanilla bean
(it can be rinsed, dried, and used for another purpose) and freeze the chilled custard in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART (1 LITER)
If there’s anything better than a big, melty scoop of caramel ice cream, I don’t know what it could be.
On second thought, I take that back. How about a big scoop of caramel ice doused with lots of warm chocolate sauce and sprinkled with toasted pecans?
To make this ice cream the most perfect caramel ice cream you’ll ever eat, it’s crucial to cook the sugar until it’s dark amber in color and as close to—but just shy of—burnt as possible. I call it “taking it right to the edge.”
I like the flavor of the ice cream made with the larger amount of salt, but because some people are salt sensitive, the recipe says to start with less, then taste the custard and add more if desired. No matter how long it’s frozen, this caramel ice cream stays scoopably soft, a big relief to those of us who are irked by homemade ice cream that freezes rock-solid and delays immediate gratification. (
see photo
)
1 cup (200 g) sugar
2 cups (500 ml) whole milk
¼ to ½ teaspoon sea salt
1 cup (250 ml) heavy cream
5 large egg yolks
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Before preparing this recipe,
see Caramelization Guidelines
.
Spread the sugar in an even layer in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan and cook over medium heat, without stirring, until the sugar begins to melt around the edges. Using a heatproof utensil, slowly drag the liquified sugar to the center and stir gently until all the sugar is melted. Continue to cook, stirring infrequently, until the caramel turns dark amber in color and begins to foam a bit. Remove from the heat and immediately add the milk. The caramel will bubble up vigorously, then the bubbling will subside.
Set the saucepan over low heat, add ¼ teaspoon salt, and stir until almost all of the hardened caramel has dissolved into the milk. A few bits may remain, but don’t worry; they’ll melt later on.
Pour the cream into a medium bowl and set a mesh strainer across the top.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks, then gradually add some of the warm caramel mixture, whisking constantly as you pour. Pour the warmed yolks back into the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan with a heatproof spatula, until the custard is thick enough to coat the spatula. Pour the custard through the mesh strainer into the heavy cream. Stir in the vanilla, then taste, and add up to ¼ teaspoon more salt, if desired.