Seville Orange Ice Cream
The Seville orange obsession continues at JustPigs: a couple of days ago I made Seville orange ice cream.
The results, I must admit, were mixed. I adapted a recipe that I found online by Nigella Lawson (and translated for American kitchens at The Splendid Table). A minor aspect of the problem comes from my own futzing around. Nigella's recipe calls for 1 cup plus 2 TBS of powdered sugar. Personal laziness combined with a love of tart things, caused me to use only 1 cup. I later did a little reading up on ice creams and discovered that you really shouldn't reduce the amount of sugar in ice cream recipes. Sugar helps keep the ice cream from over-freezing (I did get a little crystallization, but not much). Also, from a flavor perspective, I do think the extra bit of sugar was needed.
Another problem I continue to have with ice creams made with heavy cream is the fattiness. More specifically, the weird sensation--on one's tongue and the roof-of-the-mouth--of being coated in frozen butterfat. I've spent the last couple of days researching this and have a couple ideas about how to prevent it in the future. I would also love any suggestions people may have!!
From what I could find online, it's possible that I over-mixed the cream (although I did very thoroughly "lick the bowl" right afterwards and it tasted perfectly divine!). I may experiment in the future with half-and-half and milk to reduce the total fat.
Another thing that occurred to me is I may not be allowing the ice cream to warm up enough before serving. I attempted patience yesterday and allowed a little more time for the ice cream to come up to a more scoop-able temperature. That did seem to help a bit. I also wonder if it could be an emulsion problem, but have no idea how to fix that.
In any case, it's not inedible. We will most certainly eat it all. But I will attempt to correct these problems next time. My slight adaptations to Nigella's recipe are as follows:
Seville Orange Ice Cream
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup half-and-half
1 cup powdered sugar (plus 2 TBS!)
Zest of 2 Seville oranges
Juice of 3 Seville oranges
1 TBS Cointreau
Put all the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the whisk attachment, beat the cream to stiff peaks (be careful not over-beat!).Put the whipped cream in a bread loaf pan and cover with plastic wrap. Leave 3-5 hours to freeze. Remove from the freezer 20 minutes before serving to let the ice cream soften up a bit.
