Kahlua ice cream

[ilanarama]

I made Kahlua ice cream the other day (a suitably vague point of time which encompasses both mixing up the batter on Wednesday afternoon, and ice-creamifying it yesterday) and it is yummy! If this were a real cooking blog I'd have lots of delectable photos to make your mouth water, but I couldn't find the camera, and anyway, you all know what ice cream and its ingredients look like.

One reason I decided on Kahlua (other than that we have a half-full bottle in the liquor cabinet) is that alcohol makes ice cream freeze to a softer consistency, and I had three (medium) egg yolks left over from making coconut macaroons earlier in the week. No, that's not a nonsequitur; as I mentioned back in December I have moved from egg yolks to whole eggs in ice cream (following Ben & Jerry's Sweet Cream Base) and found that the resulting texture is no longer rock-hard, but nicely scoopable. I hoped the combination of the higher proportion of yolks (I knew I'd need a little more egg) and alcohol would cancel out.

I Googled some recipes as a starting point, and ended up combining the above B&J base, this food.com recipe, and this recipe from Ice Cream Ireland, as follows:

1.5 cups milk
1.5 cups cream
3 medium egg yolks and 1 medium egg
0.75 cup superfine sugar
0.25 cup Kahlua
2 packets G7 black instant coffee powder
some Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate chips

Ingredient notes:

• I get local free-range eggs at the farmer's market, and mediums are a lot cheaper and only a little smaller. I imagine next time I make this I'll use whatever, eggs or egg yolks.
• Superfine sugar is also called "baker's sugar" or bar sugar - it dissolves more quickly.
• We discovered the G7 coffee through friends. It is really good stuff, for instant, and we take it backpacking and rafting, wherever weight and/or space is at a premium. We did a taste test versus Starbucks Via and everyone preferred it (plus it's cheaper!) but I'm sure it doesn't stack up to real brewed coffee.

Mix milk and cream in a medium saucepan and heat to warm but not simmering. Mix egg yolks and egg in a bowl and slowly add sugar while beating at low speed, until thoroughly mixed, and continue to beat a little while longer. While beating, pour about half of the warm milk/cream mixture into the egg/sugar mixture, then pour all back into the saucepan and stir in coffee powder. Stirring occasionally, heat to 170°F (I use a candy thermometer, but you can just heat to where it's steamy) and then allow to cool to about room temperature before stirring in the Kahlua. Refrigerate a bunch of hours (I did it overnight) and then put it in the ice-cream maker and ice-creamify it. Chop the chocolate chips into smaller bits and add toward the end.

The texture (after further freezing; it's always soft right out of the ice-cream maker) was still on the soft side, no doubt due to the alcohol, but perfectly acceptable. The taste is awesome, not overwhelming but definitely Kahlua-coffee rather than simply coffee. Yum. I would kind of like a stronger Kahlua flavor, but I wouldn't want to add any more alcohol because of the texture issue, and I don't really want to add more coffee because we usually have ice cream as an after-dinner dessert and we both have enough problems sleeping as it is.

Comments

[aerye]

Ohhh, YUM.

[ilanarama]

Yum indeed! And now that it is nominally not winter, Britt won't grumble about it being too cold for ice cream (I know there is no such thing, of course) so I shall make it more frequently!

[musesfool]

Oh, this sounds good, and I have a small bottle of kahlua strictly for ice cream making purposes!

[ilanarama]

You don't drink it, but you'll eat it?

[musesfool]

Heh. No, I'll drink it, but I don't really have much call to do so at home alone; I bought it to make ice cream with.

[blnchflr]

Seriously, your post just made me "waste" 1½ on the internets looking up homemade kahlua recipes, and then homemade other things recipes, and I only just now made my way back to this tab O_O !

Kahlua icecream sounds yummy - I know kahlua over vanilla icecream is pretty darn yummy, mmm.

[ilanarama]

Britt decided to go for the overkill and pour Kahlua over his Kahlua ice cream!