Couldn’t let summer pass without an ice cream recipe.
I was going to write this big long post on home, but what I really want to share with you this month is an easy, delicious ice cream recipe and a video from Willie Nelson’s newest album that makes me cry when I see it.
First, the video.
You are a cold soul if this doesn’t smack you in the feels.
My darling child took me to see Willie Nelson at Merriweather Post Pavilion in June as a Mother’s Day present, and good lord did I ever love it. He is slowing down, and he didn’t play as much or sing quite as well, but his is the voice of my childhood, a soft and gravelly and sweet recollection of moments of peace. I like that he is such a lover of horses and actually has a rescued wild herd of his own in Texas.
He opened his set with this video, and it immediately filled me up and made me want to move out west to watch the wild horses run and then maybe buy a little cheap land of my own and rescue all of them myself. And later when I came home and finally calmed down I started to think about how the choices we make in our lives are as much about letting something go as they are about choosing something. So when we decide we are going to be a firefighter we don’t get to be an astronaut.
We have to decide between two things we might most want to do because we are only all of us just humans and not able to split in two.
So I don’t get to go out west and buy land to rescue horses because I have chosen to buy some raw land in Canada and build a camping platform, then a shed, then maybe a little house with a deck that looks out into the thunderous waters of the Bay of Fundy.
Still, and even though I am in love with our little patch of grass, with its baby forest and population of bark-munching porcupines, I feel a deep tug in my heart towards horses, a connection that I have felt since I have known breath. I think it’s their wildness that moves me – the way they are pure instinct and beauty.
Perhaps I will have another life to surrender to that tug of wildness.
But in this life, this current one where my particular friend and I are trapped inside due to heat that is in the 110-degree range, a stifling, suffocating sweat bath of weather that may become what is normal for this time of year, I have made perhaps the most delicious ice cream to date (giving Spicy Sweet Corn and the one with the tamarind caramel a run for their money). It is simple and can easily be dairy-free if you like.
Also, I used an ice cream machine to churn (reluctantly because I hate my ice cream maker, but that’s another story. Currently taking recommendations if you have any.), but you could also just freeze it without churning and thaw slightly before serving. Easy and delicious.
Coconut Cherry Ice Cream With Toasted Almonds
Ingredients
2 cans of full-fat coconut milk (NOT coconut cream)
1/2 can sweetened condensed milk (or 1/2 cup sugar for vegan version)
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups pitted fresh cherries (ish. Don’t get too precious about this amount)
1/2 cup almonds, chopped and toasted
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut
Method
Place all ingredients except for almonds and coconut in a blender and blend until combined.
If you are going to churn with an ice cream maker, follow your manufacturer’s directions, adding the coconut and almonds in the last five minutes of churning.
If you are going to simply freeze, stir in coconut and almonds, and freeze until set. If you prefer, you can leave the coconut and almonds out for a couple of hours, and then stir them in before freezing completely. This will keep them more evenly dispersed in the ice cream (they will sink to the bottom while the ice cream is still liquid).
Don’t get me wrong; I can cook the hell out of some savory food. Enchiladas, arepas, ramen: I know it doesn’t seem like I ever cook dinner, but I totally do. But I love sweet things. I love to make them and eat them and give them away.
It seems fitting for the last three days of summer to feature just one more ice cream recipe, and this one is a doozy. The Honey-Hopped Ice Cream of last month came about when I got fresh Cascade hops from Redwing Farm in West Virginia. This month’s ice cream is also straight outta the Pacific Northwest. The Kid visited relatives in Washington State last August and came back with contraband: chocolate mint clippings, wrapped in a soggy paper towel and sealed in a Ziploc for the trip. I tossed them in some soil and sort of forgot about them. Fast forward over a year to a lush window box filled with fresh chocolate mint, a little leggy but bursting with chocolatey flavor.
Add a big carton of heavy cream about to turn and some leftover chocolate, and good lord. This ice cream is deeply chocolate, not too sweet, and richly flavored and scented with mint.
Served with Frank’s Holy Bundt, which was quite unnecessary and yet somehow very necessary at the exact same time. A fitting goodbye to a busy summer.
Chocolate Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Tons of variations here. You can use plain mint. You can vary the type of dairy. You can eliminate the cocoa powder (but reduce the sugar to 3/4 cup). If you cannot find chocolate mint, plain will do just fine.
Ingredients
3 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1 packed cup fresh chocolate mint leaves
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
6 egg yolks
pinch salt
3/4 cup chopped chocolate (see Recipe Notes)
Method
Heat heavy cream and milk in a saucepan over medium heat until bubble form around the sides. Add fresh mint leaves and cover. Steep for at least 45 minutes.
While the mint is steeping, whisk together sugar, cocoa powder, egg yolks, and salt in a large bowl. It will form a paste (which is fine. Don’t panic.).
Strain mint leaves out of the cream/milk mixture and then back into the saucepan. Heat again until bubbles form. Remove from heat.
Here is the tricky part. Go slowly.
Pour a thin, trickling stream of cream/milk into the egg/sugar/cocoa mixture, whisking constantly as you do. It may be challenging to loosen up the egg/sugar/cocoa paste at first, but continue to go slowly. You don’t want to scramble your eggs.
Once all of the cream/milk is incorporate, place strainer over the saucepan and strain mixture through. This will catch any stray scrambled egg bits if you have them.
Turn heat to low, and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens (about ten minutes). Take this step slowly as well or your eggs will scramble.
Remove from heat and strain once more into a clean bowl. Cover the surface of the mixture with plastic wrap and chill thoroughly, at least four hours (but overnight is fine, too).
Once your mixture is chilled, process according to your ice cream maker’s directions. Add the chopped chocolate in for the last five minutes.
Freeze for a couple of hours, then share with people you love.
Recipe Notes
If you eliminate the cocoa, cut the sugar to 3/4 cup as noted above or your final product will be way too sweet.
For the chopped chocolate, I used a combination of 3/4 of an old bar of Ikea dark chocolate and a handful of Hershey’s Special Dark Kisses. It’s what was on hand, and I am all about that life.
“Isn’t beer the holy libation of sincerity? The potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners?” ~Milan Kundera~
I have always felt like I am too much and just not enough at the same time.
Perhaps not best to be writing this on the 11th anniversary of my father’s death, the 12th anniversary of my cousin Teddy’s death, and the day I am driving to a memorial for my uncle Jim who died late last week. Oh, and the last day of my daughter’s high school career (thank god), heading towards the first big milestone her father will miss (graduation).
But there you have it. The words come when they come.
As my friend Corey’s daughter J said to her the other day, “Oh my God, mom. Your feelings. They’re so big and there are so many of them. It’s exhausting.”
It is exhausting. For not only people around me but for me as well.
The constant background understanding that I am taking up too much space.
That my highs and lows are inconvenient and need to be explained away or apologized for.
That I can’t allow these strong feelings to pass through me or be processed out loud in the presence of anyone who might conceivably be offended, so I have to remove myself from people, even when it’s the exact opposite of what I need.
That sometimes I feel crushingly lonely, and the “just not enough” part kicks in to remind me exactly how worthless and unworthy I am in the first place, so what else did I expect?
Jesus. First-world, overprivileged, white-people problems, but goddamn. They still are real to me, daily present, and require constant negotiation and mediation in a brain that is already chock-a-block full of recriminations against its owner.
I have always felt outside of things – my family, my friends, the people I work with – and I don’t expect that to go away anytime soon.
I understand that I am not for everyone. Mostly it’s ok. The people I am for are with me for life. They get it.
This past weekend Khristian and I fled to the hills of West Virginia to our friends at Redwing Farm. I have known these people for nearly three decades. They have seen me through all of my iterations – safe to say they are for me. They were hosting a sleepover for their daughter’s birthday, a previously low-key affair that swelled from two kids to eight kids and potentially 20 adults staying for dinner in the space of just a few hours. One desperate text and 12 hours later, we were cresting the wooded driveway that leads to their house, there to offer moral support and help where we could.
We meant to come back in late summer anyway, not only for the company of Luke, Keveney, and Casey but also to pick the hops that twine their way up their porch railing. It had been a hard summer for the hops; although plentiful, many of them never quite opened. Still, as we left for home less than 24 hours after we arrived, I tucked a grocery bag full of them away in the car to play with at home.
Like me, this ice cream is not for everyone. It’s an unusual mix of flavors, and care must be taken to get the balance right. The first iteration was delicious but so bitter on the finish that it was impossible to eat, but this one manages to be smooth, sweet, and creamy, with a touch of citrus and salt and a definite hoppy vibe.
Honey Hopped Ice Cream With Salted Almond Toffee
Ingredients
Honey Hopped Ice Cream
2 cups whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup fresh Cascade hops
6 egg yolks
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Salted Almond Toffee
(Annoying sidebar: you need a candy thermometer for this.)
Make the ice cream: Heat milk, heavy cream, and honey in a heavy saucepan over medium heat until warm (look for small bubbles to appear around the edges of the pan). Remove from heat, add the hops, and cover. Steep for at least 20 minutes (taste. You should be able to taste the hops, but they should not make the back of your throat pucker.).
Strain hops out and return the milk to the saucepan. Bring back to a simmer (not boiling – look for the bubbles again).
Place egg yolks, lemon zest, and salt in a separate bowl and whisk well to combine.
Here is the tricky part, so go slow.
In a thin stream, gradually and slowly add the hot milk mixture to the egg, whisking vigorously. If you add it all at once you will end up with honey hopped scrambled eggs, which is truly disgusting.
Once the milk is added to the egg, place a strainer over the heavy saucepan and pour the mixture back into the saucepan. This catches any stray hop flowers (or scrambled egg).
Over low heat and stirring constantly, cook the mixture until it begins to thicken. You will know it is ready when it coats the back of a spoon (about ten minutes).
Remove from heat and strain again into a clean bowl, covering with plastic wrap that rests on the surface (so no skin forms). You can refrigerate this overnight (which Serious Eats says is best for flavor), or you can just cool it completely (about four hours) before churning according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.
Make the toffee: While your ice cream custard is chilling, make your salted almond toffee. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
Toast your almonds in a pan (or the oven) over low heat (or 350 degrees) until they begin to release their delicious, nutty aroma (between five and seven minutes, ish). Remove from pan (or oven) and allow to cool before chopping them roughly.
Place butter, sugar, water, lemon juice, and salt in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Clip your candy thermometer to the side of the saucepan. DO NOT STIR. Swirl gently as the ingredients melt, then watch carefully as the thermometer climbs to 300 degrees. NO MORE NO LESS.
Do not wander off. You will go from barely bubbling to burnt and bitter within seconds. #AskMeHowIKnow
Once you reach that temperature, remove from heat and add your chopped toasted almonds. Work quickly to combine, then pour onto parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Spread to about 1/4″ thick (or whatever. It doesn’t really matter, but it cools faster when it’s thinner). Allow to cool completely.
Place in a sealed plastic bag and beat the toffee with a rolling pin to break it up into little bits.
PUT THAT SHIT TOGETHER: In the last five minutes of churning, add the salted almond toffee to the ice cream.
Don’t overchurn, and allow to freeze following your ice cream maker’s instructions.
I am not a rise-and-grind, hustle-and-stack kind of girl.
While I recognize the value in this philosophy for some folks, it just doesn’t feel good for me. It feels frantic and crazy-making and doesn’t leave any space inside it for enjoying the fruits of your labor.
It’s a grind. A slog. An ongoing rush to get something more than what you have.
My dad, in his day, and all of the days I had with him, was a hustle-and-stack OG. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2001 and given six months to live. I quit my job and flew back East from Seattle so he could get to know his infant granddaughter in whatever time he had left. Although he positively doted on her (for the next six years), he was often too busy to do more than come up from his basement office and say hi. He traveled for his work constantly and worked through multiple bouts of chemo and radiation and many courses of experimental treatments.
In a moment of frustration, I asked him once what amount of money it would take for him to stop working long enough to come out of the basement and enjoy his family before he died. He had no answer – it was literally the hustle he liked, I think, more than the progress towards any goal.
Part of this compulsion to grind stems from fear. Fear of not having enough, being enough, or deserving enough.
But then I read this quote from Osho:
“Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.”
Yes. THIS.
Fear is oxymoronic in that it can alternately hold us back and compel us forward. Fear is the trigger that serves our flight, fight, or freeze instincts, the ones buried so deeply in our brains that we don’t even recognize that this compulsive need for hustling and stacking is just a modern-day version of fleeing from a saber tooth tiger.
The other side of this compulsion is that we never truly get to experience whatever it is we say we are seeking to experience if we are constantly hustling. There is no ease, no balance. No repose. No rest.
Of course, this ease and repose can masquerade as lazy, and the whole world will jump to tell you that time spent slowly is time wasted.
As all three regular readers of this blog can attest, I disagree with the whole world in this regard. I don’t think you can really know what it means to feel something without slowing down to feel it. You might think that “hustle and stack” has little, if anything, to do with feeling, but think back to a time when you won something. That rush of adrenaline; that quick flush of victory. For some people, it’s positively ADDICTIVE.
Today in my yin yoga class with Jessie Kates, she talked about the idea that having goals and plans in this life are good, but sometimes we get so distracted by them that we forget to slow down to take detours to do things that give us joy just because. Maybe the detours don’t make us money, or they don’t increase our social media reach, or otherwise elevate us to the lofty, random standards that others set. But WOW.
Joy? The possibility of joy? The potential to do something just because it feels good for your soul?
YES. THAT.
That I would rise-and-grind for.
I will also rise-and-grind for:
an early morning camping trip
a road trip
my birthday
Sicily’s birthday
Khristian’s birthday
most people’s birthdays, if I am honest
complicated cooking projects
a long walk in the woods
a heart-opening yoga class
I am done rising-and-grinding for the sake of itself, and I am certainly not making the hustling and the stacking a priority. I sound like your grandmother, adding “the” in front of “hustling” and “stacking” (as I often do with The Facebook, except that’s what it used to be called, but I digress), but know that it’s a writing device and is not accidental and since I know the rules I can break them so there.
I like the idea of a leisurely morning on my balcony with coffee and three trees’ worth of birds twittering and flitting. I like listening to little kids walking to the park across the street and watching dogs with their zingy little bodies flinging themselves around with sheer delight at being outside because they can. This is not time wasted. This is time spent rooted in the essence of respect and awe, and wouldn’t that be a lovely thing to do?
We can actually construct a life that has built into it more time for joy and awe and respect and wonder and zingy-body flinging, so long as we are willing to shuffle off the mortal coil of Stuff and Striving. I suppose it’s a bit of striving to make this happen, too, but in the very best way – the shedding part of striving, where you shed the illusion that you have to Do and Be and Go in order to be considered Successful.
(and true and weird thing that just happened: as my brain wanted to type “Successful,” my fingers typed “Suzannah.” STRANGE.)
The best parts of this will come together with less effort than one might think necessary. Just like this ice cream. Khristian and I are cooking our way through Madhur Jaffrey’s Vegetarian India, and as we finished up one meal and began to plan the other, these flavors came to me. Sweet. Sour. Spicy. Salty. The balance of flavor was not instantaneous, but that’s just the way things go, mostly, in ice cream as in life.
Take a detour with me here, and then tell me the best detour you ever took in the comments.
Make the ice cream: Place dairy and vanilla bean (or extract) in a heavy saucepan over medium heat and heat until small bubbles appear around the sides (do not boil).
While the dairy is heating, place egg yolks, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine.
When dairy is ready, remove from heat and begin to slowly add to eggs, whisking constantly. I cannot emphasize enough the words “slowly add” and “whisking constantly.” If you add quickly and don’t whisk, you will make sweetened scrambled eggs. Pour a few drops of dairy at a time to begin, gradually working your way to a thin, constant stream of dairy, whisked into the eggs.
Once combined, place the saucepan back on the stove with a fine-mesh strainer on top of it. Strain the milk and egg mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, whisking constantly, for about ten minutes (or until the mixture begins to thicken). Eventually, the mixture will thinly coat the back of a spoon, and you will know it’s done.
Place the fine-mesh strainer over another bowl, and strain dairy mixture into the bowl. Place plastic wrap on the surface of the dairy mixture and place in ‘fridge to cool completely. This can be done a couple of days ahead of time if you prefer.
Make the caramel: While the dairy is chillin’, make your caramel. Caramel is not hard but requires patience and a tiny bit of finesse. Combine sugar and water in a high-sided heavy saucepan over medium heat and swirl gently to mix (don’t use a spoon; pick up the saucepan and swirl it around).
You can leave the sugar/water mix briefly to combine the heavy cream and tamarind extract in a separate bowl. The tamarind extract immediately makes the cream thicken. This is totally fine. Do not panic. Set aside.
Take a look at your sugar/water mixture. You are looking to see if the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture is bubbling. The bubbling will cause sugar deposits to climb up the side of the pan; use a pastry brush dipped in water to encourage those crystals to rejoin the liquid, but do not stir in.
Once your sugar mixture turns a light golden yellow, remove from heat and whisk in the cream and tamarind concentrate mixture. The sugar will bubble up (hence the high sides of the saucepan), so work quickly to incorporate the cream mixture. Stir and cook over medium-low heat until the mixture begins to thicken enough to coat the back of a spoon. Place in a jar or other container and let cool to at least room temperature. Set aside.
Make the crumble: Combine all ingredients in a food processor or blender and pulse until you have medium-fine crumbs. Set aside.
Put it all together: You will process the ice cream according to your manufacturer’s instructions. I pour my custard in and process for about 15 minutes, then add the peanut crumble for five minutes (until totally incorporated) and then the completely cool tamarind caramel. I like there to be chewy streaks of caramel throughout, a little tartness to cut the sweet.
Recipe Notes
A word on dairy: I generally use 50% heavy cream and 50% whole milk in my ice creams, but you can use whatever is on hand. The more cream, the creamier (which makes sense). You can also be vegan AF if you like, but I have not tested this with plant milks (the ice cream or the caramel). Both might be very delicious with coconut milk.
My particular friend and I have Brady-bunched our households recently, in a much less dramatic fashion than the TV show (he brings a near-teenager part-time, D, and I have a teenager, Sicily, who is full-time but who is also a working stiff with lots of friends and is not around as often as she used to be).
It has been challenging, which is an understatement along the lines of “That iceberg looks pretty big,” and “Is it dangerous that this zeppelin is filled with extremely explosive gas?”
It is hard to know whether the best way to do this is to rip the Band-Aid off and just shove everyone together with family-type events or to let things just happen.
If you have teenagers, you know both are loaded propositions. Trying to manufacture a new type of family can be saccharin and artificial, and teenagers tend to mostly want to hibernate in their own rooms. So if we force everyone to a nightly family dinner it might feel fake and super awkward, but when left to their own devices, the two teenagers tend to disappear to their respective rooms, emerging like hibernating bears for food and occasionally to wash a huge load of laundry and shower. This makes getting to know everyone in this new way difficult.
And then there is the challenge of nurturing and growing our own relationship in the face of surly teenagers, differing parenting styles, and the shit that is cohabitating with others (how are there so many freaking bobby pins and single socks in this house?!). How do you manage an adult relationship with children that is not based on those children?
If you are a parent who is still partnered with the other half of your offspring’s DNA, you have exactly zero idea of what I am talking about. That’s totally amazing, and I am truly happy for you in your relationship. DON’T WASTE IT.
If you have lost a spouse to divorce or death, and you have managed to pull your soggy, mangled heart off the wasteland of the floor that is your life and actually get out into the world and meet another person, you are in for a challenge that goes far beyond being vulnerable, confronting loss, and worrying about showing your naked self to someone new for the first time in ______ years.
Turns out, those things are easy when compared to navigating the treacherous waters of parenting someone else’s kid.
For the record, I will never be D’s mom. She has a mom who loves her fiercely, exactly the way a mother should. I don’t share the birth experience with D, and that in and of itself is a powerful connection that only a biological mother can feel.
Side note: I have an adopted brother. Adoptive parents can feel just as powerful a connection in a different way that is no less valid and potent. Don’t get mad and send me hate mail. I mean no disrespect.
But there is no way around it: I am an adult in D’s life, and she is a child in my house. Khristian is looking down the barrel of a 17-year-old teenager (my daughter) who lost a dad of her own and isn’t really looking for a replacement.
Do you see how things can become/have become/are becoming more complex?
Parenting is the worst best job when the kid is your own. I never wanted to be a parent. If I am being honest (which I always try to be), I am not a huge fan of kids in general (which is pretty funny since one of my callings in life has been as a teacher, both in a classroom and now on a yoga mat. But I digress.) So what do you call parenting when the worst best job applies to someone else’s kid?
How do you not be an asshole to a 12-year-old, or, at the very least, not feel like an asshole when you correct said 12-year-old in the same way you would correct your own child but when the 12-year-old is not, in fact, your 12-year-old?
It is complex. Add to this a biological mother who is struggling – understandably so – with this reconfiguration, and the layers begin to look geologic. I started this blog post a couple weeks ago, and as time passed things got more heated. For all intents and purposes, and even though D has moved in, I am an outsider to one of the main struggles in her former-family, looking in on a parental relationship that failed and continues to be problematic for the parents (and increasingly, for the child). The first sentence of this blog in its first draft asked which was harder: death or divorce.
When it comes to parenting the answer is very, very simple: divorce.
Divorced people who want nothing to do with each other are forced to interact when they share a child. That interaction will only get worse as the kid gets older and decisions get more complicated and more expensive. In contrast with Sicily, whose dead father is a keen and deeply felt knife-like absence on (increasingly predictable) occasions, Khristian’s former spouse is a keen and deeply felt knife-like presence in even the most mundane of daily decisions. These are the fogs of a former dynamic that don’t quite seem to be dissipating.
So in essence, as of now, it seems that the house is just not big enough for everyone who is here.
I talked to my therapist about this today (and I don’t care who knows). My particular friend, my sweet love – he is struggling. And so am I. I am angry, explosively so but with no proper target and no real right to be angry. I can see from the outside what I think should be done, but it’s not mine to do. And yet the center, as it is, cannot hold.
My therapist is pretty much right on with most things. Previous examples of her brilliance include the acronym SET when dealing with teenagers (Support, Empathy, Truth), an approach that revolutionized the way I dealt with The Kid when her teenager was hanging out. True to form, today she proposed that I approach the situation with this thing called “radical acceptance.”
Whereas depression says, “Nothing matters, so it’s pointless,” radical acceptance realizes that there is nothing to be done one way or the other; things just are the way they are.
In other words, there is nothing for me to do about the hovering presence of a former spouse.
Getting involved doesn’t help.
Having an opinion doesn’t help.
Getting angry/sad/bitchy about it doesn’t help.
I can listen. That’s about it.
And when I can’t listen anymore, I can even say, “Hey, man. I can’t hear this right now.”
Therapy is a fucking miracle sometimes.
In the meantime, there is always food. That constant thread.
The above-referenced 12-year-old is a big fan of ice cream (and the 17-year-old works at The Charmery in Hampden, bringing home samples after each shift). D is a talented maker of ice cream herself, but she has a palate that is, to be frank, picky, very selective , and difficult to please (it’s hard to compete with grilled cheese and tater tots). I made this sweet and spicy ice cream using corn harvested from a friend’s father’s garden on a whim, not wanting to waste either the corn (which I made into relish) or the cobs (which found their way into this recipe). D loves it, cayenne pepper and all.
I am not naive enough to think that ice cream – however delicious – will make this transition pain-free. As I write this, the adults in D’s life are still trying to get their shit together. All I can do, all any of us can do, is try to recognize that all of the conflict really has nothing to do with me and everything to do with a past that is still present for D and her father. Divorce is its own particular kind of hell, I think, a hell that expands and contracts with each passing year. This particular divorce comes with a morass of painful feelings that sit on our doorstep as we combine families. After supporting the people in my household through this, I figure the very least I can do is give them something sweet.
Spicy Sweet Corn Ice Cream
The first thing you taste is sweet corn, followed by a hint of vanilla and the scratchy burn of just a touch of cayenne. This is pretty much the best summer dessert ever.
Ingredients
4 corn cobs, corn removed (but don’t be too precious about it; you can leave some on there)
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups milk
1 vanilla bean (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
3/4 cup sugar, divided
6 egg yolks (make meringue with the whites, or give your dogs a treat)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Method
Place heavy corn cobs, heavy cream, and milk in heavy saucepan and heat until bubbles form on the edges of the milk. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.
Remove the corn cobs from the cream/milk mixture, scraping all of the delicious bits off the cob with a spoon before pouring the milk through a fine mesh sieve. Return the milk to the heat. Scrape the paste from the inside of the vanilla bean and add to the milk (or add vanilla extract, if using) and add 1/2 cup of the sugar. Heat until bubbles begin to form on the sides of the pan, stirring occasionally.
Combine egg yolks, salt, remaining 1/4 cup sugar, and cayenne in a bowl. Use a whisk to combine completely.
This next part is where you might completely ruin your custard, so go slowly. If you have no experience with this sort of thing, go at half the speed you might normally go.
Using a whisk and whisking constantly, pour a thin stream of the hot milk into the eggs. You can pour a little and whisk, or pour a thin stream constantly; you are bringing the cold eggs up to the temperature of the hot milk (or close) so that you don’t make sweet scrambled eggs (BARF).
Once you have poured and whisked about a cup of the hot milk into the eggs, add the egg mixture back into the pan and return to medium-low heat. This is the second part where you might screw it up, so go slow and keep the heat low. Cook gently, stirring constantly, for about ten minutes or until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Remove from heat and once again pass the custard through a fine-mesh strainer. You need to chill this mixture before processing, but it’s important to bring the temperature down quickly as you have just created the perfect petri dish for bacteria (eggs and sugar and milk that’s warm). To do this, fill a large bowl (bigger than the bowl you have the custard in) with ice cubes and water, and place the custard bowl inside. Stir custard occasionally. When it has cooled enough to touch, remove from ice bath, cover with plastic wrap, and chill until completely cool (at least four hours but overnight is good, too, making this a great make-ahead dessert).
Chill according to manufacturer’s directions on your ice cream maker.
