Pumpkin is kind of a thing around here if you haven’t already noticed. What better way to put canned pumpkin to good use than to make it into ice cream? Well, making it into sorbet maybe if you’re vegan or lactose-intolerant. I’ll have to try that next, but for now, I just couldn’t resist making a full-throttle, (read full-fat) ice cream.
Hey, do you know about Cardamom? It’s a Indian spice with an aromatic flavor. It’s a truly unique taste. You can buy it in pods, which keep longer, or you can buy it already ground. I used the ground version in this recipe for simplicity’s sake. It’s on the pricy side (actually, it’s the most expensive spice on the market, even more than Saffron. Isn’t that cool)? It can be left out, but if you want to try something new, you can also use it in this recipe for Pumpkin Cardamom Crackle Custard and in lots of Indian dishes.
This is kind of a 2-day process unless you start early in the morning, so be prepared to wait to sink your teeth (ouch)! into this ice cream.
[print_this]Cardamom Spiced Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream
Serves 8? or 2
This recipe was inspired by David Lebovitz’s Pumpkin Ice Cream post, but then I kind of changed it. He adapted a recipe from the book The Craft of Baking: Cakes, Cookies, and Other Sweets with Ideas for Inventing Your Own
Ingredients
5 egg yolks (large eggs)
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup 1% milk (it’s what I had)
1/3 cup plus 2 Tbsb granulated sugar (the white kind)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg (I like nutmeg. You could cut back on this)
1 whole cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin purée
Method
1. In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks and set aside.
2. Make an ice bath (ice and water in a big bowl) and place another bowl in it.
2. In a medium sauce pan, mix together the heavy whipping cream, milk, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon stick, and salt. Gently heat until the edges are bubbling. Add about half of the liquid to the egg yolks, stirring constantly. Pour that mixture in a steady stream (stirring all the time) back into the saucepan. Continue heating and stirring until mixture thickens and coats the back of a spatula. If you have a thermometer, the temperature of the liquid should be about 160˚F – 170˚F. Pour mixture through a fine strainer into the bowl nestled in the ice bath. Add the brown sugar and stir to mix and dissolve. Allow to cool and then cover and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Chill the canned pumpkin too while you’re at it. Make sure that the bowl of your ice cream maker freezes overnight too.
3. Mix together the chilled custard, the pumpkin and the vanilla. At this point, you could press the mixture through a fine-meshed strainer (David Lebovitz did), but I skipped that step to see if I could and it came out great. Pour the mixture into the ice cream maker and run for about 25 minutes or until ice cream stops looking like a custard and starts looking like ice cream. Remove immediately to a storage container and continue to freeze in the freezer.[/print_this]
