Family Favorite Eggnog Ice cream

Like most Christmases, this Christmas we made an experimental ice cream.  Eggnog ice cream.   It was such a hit that we made some more batches for relatives.  I am now dreaming of a yellowish Christmas.

We made up the recipe ourselves.  Here it is.

This recipe is meant for a standard 6 quart ice cream freezer.

Heat 3-4 c. whole milk on low heat.  Use a larger pot for this, you’ll be adding stuff.  Add 1 oz rum flavoring extract and about half that of vanilla.  (You can add them any time but its best to do it now so the alcohol will boil off.  Otherwise you get a a bitter edge to the flavor.  Don’t use artificial vanilla.  If that’s all you have, just stick with the rum.)  Stir occasionally.  (If you are in a hurry you can use medium-low or even medium heat, but you have to stir more and keep a close eye on it.  You should not be getting anything sticking on the bottom).

In a separate bowl mix 1/2 cup flour and anywhere from 1 cup – 2 cup sugar.   2 cups sugar will taste pretty sweet even to people who eat the standard American diet.  1 cup is about right if you hardly ever eat sugar and most desserts taste too sweet to you.  For an average group, I’d do 1 1/2 cups.

Once the milk is just too hot to touch, add the flour-sugar mix and stir it in.  Stir occasionally.  Again, what you want to avoid is anything sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Crack 15-18 eggs and blend them.

Once the milk flour sugar mixture is starting to splutter, pour some in to the egg mix and stir them up good.  Then pour it all back in to the pot with the remaining  milk flour sugar mix.  You can turn off the heat at this point.  (The back and forth is meant to avoid any of the egg cooking.  You can achieve the same effect if you just add the egg mix direct by stirring quick and vigorous).

Add some nutmeg (this can be done earlier or later).  I mostly added either too  much or too little and I did it all by guess, not by measurement, so I can’t help you here.  Its probably better to add too little, the you can sprinkle some more on top when you serve.  It looks classy.

Its better if you let the mix cool before you make the ice cream, but its not necessary.

Right before you are going to make the ice cream, whip up one quart of heavy whipping cream.  It needs to be whipped pretty well, stiff peaks and all that.

Combine your mix and your whipped cream in your ice cream canister.  With other ice creams you want to fill about 2/3 full, but this one can reach the top.  (With other ice creams, the churning process is adding air, so you need room for the ice cream to expand.  With this ice cream, the air is already in the whipped cream).

Use about 1.5x to 2x salt as you normally do during the freezing.  (Normally you want to avoid freezing too fast because you need time for the churning to add more air.  With this ice cream, the air is already added.  In fact, I have experimented with just freezing it in a freezer with no churning at all, see how that works).

The ice cream is too rich to freeze hard, so it can be helpful to put it in a very cold freezer for a bit if you like your ice creams harder.

Merry Christmas!

Variations:

1. Sometimes adding the run extract and the vanilla can make the milk take longer to heat up.  If you are in a hurry, you can heat them separately.  Don’t add them straight to the mix after you’ve added the flour-sugar mix.  The alcohol boiling off does something to the temperature that affects the chemistry.
2. You can try freezing it straight without an ice cream freezer.  To make this work, add the custard on top of the cream, not the other way around.  Mix well.  Finally, because the ingredients will tend to settle after a couple of hours take the mixture out of your freezer and remix.  This variation works best with the meringue variation below.
3. Separate the eggs, add the yolks to the custard as in the standard recipe, but don’t add the whites.  Instead, make a meringue with them.  Stir your meringue and cream and custard together in your ice cream canister (or in the container you are going to put in the freezer if you skip the ice cram freezer step).