Caramelized Balsamic Ice Cream

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I Scream for Ice Cream Saturdays!

Do you ever crave something only to open your fridge and discover you don’t have everything you need? If your like me, these moments happen almost daily. No matter how much time I invest into making my grocery list on the weekends, I can never predict what I’ll crave later in the week.

I wanted, no needed, some ice cream today. After a long week at work interviewing for a new baker at the bakery, I needed some quiet, relaxing ice cream eating time.

This is when I ran into my dilemma. I had about 95% of the ingredients that I needed to mix up a hybrid batch of ice cream inspired by the bases from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams Cookbook and Joy the Baker Cookbook. My dilemma was the amount of milk and cream I had on hand. A quick inventory of the fridge revealed I had Skim milk, Half and Half, and Heavy Cream to work with.

In order to get my bowl of ice cream I turned to excel, I’m kind of an excel geek and love creating formulas and knew that the right combination of milk and cream would get me the results I needed. So I went to work writing a formula in excel that allowed me to put in what I had on hand and get the same results as what the original recipe called for.

Original Recipe Calculation: 14.2% Fat

Substitution Calculations: 14.5%

My original recipe called for 8 oz of heavy cream and 16 oz of whole milk. This combination would yield about 14% of fat when the two were combined. So, with the aid of my makeshift excel spreadsheet, I substituted 8 oz of cream, 4 oz of half and half, and 12 oz of skim milk to create a mixture that was close to my original, about 14.5% fat.

This combination of milk and cream worked beautifully, this time, however I will need to test this further. Has anyone else done something similar?

Caramelized Balsamic Ice Cream Base

8 oz Heavy Cream

4 oz Half and Half

12 oz Skim Milk

1 tablespoon cornstarch

3/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon corn syrup

4 egg yolks

2 teaspoon caramelized balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Combine heavy cream, half and half, and skim milk together. Measure 2 tablespoons of the milk mixture into a separate small bowl and mix in cornstarch.

In a medium bowl combine sugar and egg yolks and whisk together until thick and pale, set aside.

In a medium saucepan, combine milk mixture and bring to a simmer and cook for 2 minutes. Temper milk mixture into the eggs by slowly drizzling it in as you whisk the eggs. Transfer milk and eggs back to the sauce pan, add in cornstarch and milk mixture and whisk until the custard thickens and will coat the back of a wooden spoon, about 180 degrees.

Strain custard into a medium bowl and allow to cool and refrigerate for at least 4 hours of overnight.

Pour mixture into an ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer’s directions, about 30-35 minutes. For my Kitchen Aid Ice Cream maker attachment, I churned the custard for 30 minutes.