We All Scream For Ice Cream

 

Goat Cheese and Roasted Cherry Ice Cream

Over spring break, we spent the week in the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains in a cabin not far from the Mountain Valley Farm, a grass-fed cattle farm. Knowing we wanted to grill steaks that evening, we hopped on over for fresh beef. I was expecting to see the normal items sold at a smaller farmer’s market like strawberry jam and things like that. I was not expecting

the sign for goat cheese and cherry ice cream. Unfortunately for me, they were sold out and left me craving this interesting combination.

After returning home, I had still had the craving for what I thought was a great fusion of flavors. We embarked on a search for the recipe because at this point I needed to know how it tasted. We found Epicurious’ recipe for Goat Cheese with Roasted Cherries on their website. The recipe seemed simple and the ingredient list was very manageable. All we needed was to toss the ice cream tub in the freezer and went for some cream, goat cheese and cherries. This recipe calls for corn starch to help thicken it. Neither of us have ever made ice cream with cornstarch in it but figured we would give it a shot anyway.

The prep was easy, we made a slurry of milk and cornstarch and set it aside. We also whisked in both the cream cheese and cream cheese until it was smooth. The remaining milk and cream were cooked with the other ingredients and moved to a zip lock bag to cool in an ice bath. We then coated our cherries with cornstarch and sugar and roasted them for about fifteen minutes. Once everything was cooled down enough, we poured the cream in to the machine and watched the magic happen. A few minutes later the ice cream was ready, and began layering the ice cream and cherries into the container. The container was placed into the freezer for the next four hours.

After it’s stent in the freezer, the long-anticipated ice cream was finally ready. Right away we noticed the difference between, a custard-based ice cream and egg-free based ice cream. The egg-free base looked a little icy and not as creamy as we had hoped. For our first bite, we tried to get a good cherry to ice cream ratio. Our reactions were the same, it tasted like frozen goat cheese with cherries. Clearly, the base just wasn’t creamy or smooth enough and was missing the richness of ice cream. Don’t get me wrong, I like the goat cheese and cherry combination, but it fell short of my ice cream expectations.

If you would like to get the entire recipe for Epicurious’ Goat Cheese Ice Cream with Roasted Cherries click here.

 

When a recipe falls a little short, we normally discuss how we would fix it and usually use what we have learned and apply it to the recipe later. We wanted this to work so much, we decided to change our format a bit and show you what we did to make this work. We would like to introduce you to:

Here we will give you our take of the dish we are creating, sometimes it will be a change, a twist, a fix or just for fun. We hope you enjoy!

L.C.T. – Goat Cheese and Roasted Cherry Ice Cream

Sheer determination to make an online recipe better, led us to come up with this recipe; we really wanted to try the goat cheese ice cream with a custard base.

Ingredients

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
4 egg yolks
2/3 cup sugar
5 oz goat cheese
8 oz dark cherries
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp Cornstarch

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400°

In a 4-quart saucepan heat heavy cream, whole milk and two cups of sugar on medium heat, just until it starts to boil and sugar is dissolved. In the mean time whisk egg yolks and goat cheese in a large bowl until smooth. Once milk mixture is ready, slowly whisk the milk to the egg and cheese to temper the eggs. Go slow, you don’t want to make scrambled eggs. Once combined add to a large zip lock bag and place flat in freezer for about thirty minutes or until the mixture is very cold. If the tempering of the eggs did not go exactly as you intended, you may want to strain the mixture before adding the mixture to the zip lock bag.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the cream is cooling, toss the cherries with the cornstarch and remaining sugar before placing them on a baking sheet. Place the cherries in oven for 15-20 minutes until they get dark and bubbly. As soon as they are done place on the counter to cool and then place in the refrigerator until needed.

Once everything is nice and cold, it’s time to setup the ice cream maker. Turn the ice cream until it is thick and creamy. As soon as it’s ready layer the ice cream adding the cherries here and there. You don’t want to mix the cherries in, because you will end up with pink ice cream with squashed cherries. As soon as all the ice cream and cherries are layered freeze in an airtight container for at least four hours. Enjoy!