Ellyn
Veteran
This was inspired by the YouTube cooking show "Feast of Fiction", which featured the blue sea salt ice cream popsicles from the video game Kingdom Hearts II. The hosts promised that you do not even need an ice cream maker, although it would not be a simple frozen juice pop but actually involve cream and even eggs in this ice cream recipe.
Except for the salt and turquoise food coloring, it reminded me a lot of making eggnog. This is the eggnog recipe that I use, or try to use but I can't find mace or real vanilla bean anywhere (but that's okay because I actually live where all the other spices are cultivated, and I just substitute the bean with vanilla flavoring.)
In both recipes, the trick to not scalding the egg is to add the hot milk-herb infusion to the isolated egg yolks to cook them smoothly, instead of adding the egg yolks to the simmering pot where they're likely to scramble and curdle.
The trick to keeping the ice cream creamy instead of half cream and half slushee or ice pop, (in addition maybe to the rather complicated step of freezing the egg mixture in ice cube trays and then pureeing the cubes with the cream mix--although I'd actually skip that step if there's no coloring or extra flavor to add), is to let the ice cream mix cool to room temperature and then ensure that the freezer is very cold. A faster freeze will ensure that ice crystals don't form.
The hosts of Feast of Fiction, in creating the blue salt pops, encourage shaking the mix to get rid of air bubbles. I actually sort of like when air bubbles get in and then it freezes fast, because as a result it usually becomes cake-textured inside when it's really ice cream. I found this out with gallon tubs left over from an ice cream party hosted at the apartment that my family lived in once that melted to a soup and was then re-frozen--although, that probably won't work in such low volumes as paper cups or popsicle molds.
Edit to add: I have somehow completely forgotten that eggnog can be, and is meant to be, alcoholic! Better super-freeze that, then, since alcohol doesn't freeze at the same temperature as milk and cream-- or maybe there's some brandy or whisky artificial flavoring out there...
Except for the salt and turquoise food coloring, it reminded me a lot of making eggnog. This is the eggnog recipe that I use, or try to use but I can't find mace or real vanilla bean anywhere (but that's okay because I actually live where all the other spices are cultivated, and I just substitute the bean with vanilla flavoring.)
In both recipes, the trick to not scalding the egg is to add the hot milk-herb infusion to the isolated egg yolks to cook them smoothly, instead of adding the egg yolks to the simmering pot where they're likely to scramble and curdle.
The trick to keeping the ice cream creamy instead of half cream and half slushee or ice pop, (in addition maybe to the rather complicated step of freezing the egg mixture in ice cube trays and then pureeing the cubes with the cream mix--although I'd actually skip that step if there's no coloring or extra flavor to add), is to let the ice cream mix cool to room temperature and then ensure that the freezer is very cold. A faster freeze will ensure that ice crystals don't form.
The hosts of Feast of Fiction, in creating the blue salt pops, encourage shaking the mix to get rid of air bubbles. I actually sort of like when air bubbles get in and then it freezes fast, because as a result it usually becomes cake-textured inside when it's really ice cream. I found this out with gallon tubs left over from an ice cream party hosted at the apartment that my family lived in once that melted to a soup and was then re-frozen--although, that probably won't work in such low volumes as paper cups or popsicle molds.
Edit to add: I have somehow completely forgotten that eggnog can be, and is meant to be, alcoholic! Better super-freeze that, then, since alcohol doesn't freeze at the same temperature as milk and cream-- or maybe there's some brandy or whisky artificial flavoring out there...
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