Our dear friend Foad is moving from London to L.A. and decided to throw a party for all his favourite people. We where honoured to be invited to make ice cream for the event. The theme for the party was “Goodbye London, hello L.A.” so we thought we would try and make 2 batches, symbolising the 2 cities respectively.
Thanks to my sister Jen for suggesting apple crumble as the English flavour. Interestingly Peter tells me that its not uncommon in the US. Despite the lack of English monopoly on crumble topping it does reminded me of home-cooking and school days to I figured the sentiment wouldn’t be lost on a home crowd.
I think of PB & J as a classic American flavour. I’ve wanted to make peanut butter ice cream with a jelly ripple ever since I discovered that jam doesn’t get icy when its at freezer temperature. I’ve made ripple ice creams before with more watery ripple mixtures and found that when they get stored in the freezer the the ripple becomes crunchy, which kind of spoils a smooth ice-cream.
Apple Crumble Ice cream
Ingredients
Apple Ice Cream
- 8 Apples I usually use eating apples: Cox or Braeburn
- Cinnamon to taste
- 4 tbsp butter
- 1.5 beaten eggs
- 1 US cup granulated white sugar
- 12 fl. oz. double cream 48% fat
- Full fat milk 6% fat
Crumble Topping
- 4 oz butter salted or unsalted, softened to room temperature.
- 6 oz rolled oats porridge oats
- 2 oz plain flour
- 4 oz granulated sugar demerara ideally, white or golden if not
- Pinch of salt if desired
Instructions
Crumble Topping
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Preheat the oven to 180°C (Gas Mark 5). Mix the sugar, flour, oats and salt (if desired). Rub in the butter until the mixture forms clumps.
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Spread out on a tray and bake until turns golden (10-20mins). Cool.
Apple Ice Cream
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Peel, core and finely chop the apples. Fry them in the butter with a tablespoon or two of the sugar and the cinnamon until softened. It can be nice to slightly caramelise the apples at this stage.
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Mix the sugar, cream, 1 cup of milk and beaten egg, ensuring that the sugar is dissolved.
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Liquidize the apples in a blender/food processor. You will probably need to add a little of the cream-milk mix into the blender whilst it is running to loosen the apples enough to make them blend.
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Mix the apples and the remaining cream-milk mix. Run it through a sieve to remove lumps. Top up with milk. Â Freeze.
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Sprinkle the crumble on top of the ice cream just before serving.
Peanut Butter & Jelly Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 1.5 beaten eggs
- 1 US cup granulated white sugar
- 12 fl. oz. double cream 48% fat
- Full fat milk 6% fat
- 300 g smooth unsalted unsweetened organic peanut butter
- 284 g semi-frozen jam (one jar)
Instructions
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Put a mixing bowl (preferably glass) big enough to hold a batch of ice cream in the freezer.
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Mix the peanut butter well to re-integrate any oil that has started to separate out to the top of the jar.
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Mix the peanut butter with the sugar and egg – this can be hard work. Then mix in the cream.
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Pour into the can and top up with milk. Freeze.
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Once the ice cream is frozen, transfer it to the cold mixing bowl and add the frozen jam.
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Turn the ice cream and jam together, very lightly, at most 5-6 turns with a spoon to make a swirl, too many and it will just dissolve into it.
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Ideally, then put the ice cream into the freezer to firm up, we just served it straight off.
Recipe Notes
We used St Dalfour jam which is sweetened with grape juice rather than sugar, but any jam would be fine. This batch used strawberry jam which was good but I’m curious to try raspberry – it’d be interesting to see if the seeds in the raspberry detracted from the smoothness of the ice-cream.
The choice of peanut butter is really important, some “smooth” peanut butters can still be quite grainy. Also avoid those that have palm oil or vegetable oil added to them – it gives a weird waxy quality to the ice-cream. Â We used Suma because its really smooth and 100% peanuts, plus and I really like the flavour.
The party was held at a great bar called the Hackney Cut. We cranked these batches on their back porch next to a canal on the other side of which was the Olypmic stadium. The guys in the bar were super-nice and chilled a whole bunch of shot glasses in the freezer before-hand for us to serve into. Particular thanks to David the chef for letting us invade his kitchen. Apologies to the person who’s pizza got burned whilst he was out fetching ice for us.
The flavours were great, the peanut butter was super-smooth with a nice acid/sweet cut of jam. I loved the crumble topping + ice cream combo, so I’ll definitely be doing that again. The apple ice cream was a bit fluffy but that always seems to happen when using fresh apples, regardless of how well it liquidized. Over-all 2 very successful batches and a great night out – thanks to Foad for inviting us, good luck in L.A.
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