Plum tequila ice cream

So, you remember in my last post I said I had big plans for the combination of plums and tequila? Check me out on my follow-through! Plum tequila ice cream.

I just tasted some to remind me what I wanted to write and what I want to write is that it tastes good, the tequila is subtle, there's cinnamon and vanilla and that's not a bad thing, the texture is nice. But it's not the sort of ice cream where you can taste it blindfolded and name the ingredients. And, when I thought about it, I realized that I kind of like ice cream that you can taste blindfolded and know what's in it. This ice cream isn't bad, but I'm not going to pine for it.

Anyway, a foray into ice cream is never a waste because if you start off with the basic custard recipe, you won't go wrong. The basic custard recipe is like a golden ticket to a very agreeable land.

So, here's how it went.

Plum tequila ice cream (with basic custard instructions mixed in)

For the basic custard:

3 cups dairy (I used whole milk, you make your own choices)
1 cup sugar
8 egg yolks
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean


Here are some things to keep in mind:

• On the milk, because I know a lot of us don't keep whole milk on hand, I've heard that you can freeze the milk and, after thawing, it's still suitable for ice cream making. So buy the half gallon or whatever, use what you need, freeze the rest.
• The egg yolks—what to do with the egg whites if you don't have time to make meringues or macarons or angel food cake? The internet tells me that these also freeze well. I'll tell you if that's true or not when I use the ones that are sitting in my freezer.
• You may say, hey, Mariana, you're sneaky but I can't be tricked! Your recipe says 8 egg yolks, but that picture very clearly has NINE. And to you I say, good eye, but sometimes you have a crazy lucky day and get two egg yolks in just one egg.
  
• Make the custard well ahead of when you want to make ice cream. You make the custard and then cool it down in the refrigerator and then make the ice cream, it's not a hugely work-intensive process but it does require a bit of planning.
  

To the basic ingredients above I also added:

4 ripe red plums, cut in pieces
1 vanilla bean, split
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 cup silver tequila

First, whether you're doing basic or fruit-added, you bring the dairy to a boil. If you're using fruit, put the fruit in the pot while bringing the milk to a boil—you want to infuse the milk with the flavor. I also added the salt, vanilla bean, cinnamon stick, and tequila at this point. If you're using vanilla extract, don't add it now. Add it at the very end, so all that flavor doesn't cook away.

But, look! The plums made my dairy all mealy and watery:


To fix this, I strained the dairy after it came to a boil. Then I found that I was down to only two cups of a dairy so I added another cup of milk, brought that to a boil again and, once all that business was done, continued on my way.

First thing on my way: let the dairy cool down to room temperature. Why? Because the next step is adding the yolks and if the milk is hot, the yolks will curdle and curdling does not make a smooth custard.

Once the dairy is at room temperature, beat the yolks and sugar together until they're a smooth paste. Add that to the dairy, put your pot on medium heat, and stir until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. I hope you're listening to something interesting on the radio, or maybe talking to a friend on the phone. Maybe you're calling me, even though I haven't been good about returning your phone calls!

If you're using vanilla extract, add it now, once the custard has been taken off the burner. Strain all this through something to get rid of all those incidental curdles which might happen even if you are very adamant about your constant stirring, and let it sit in the fridge for a while.


Once it's cool, make it into ice cream! In your ice cream maker! I thought the flavor of mine was nice, but not too exciting, so I crumbled up some amaretto cookies and added that once the ice cream was fairly solid.

Ice cream ghost!