Sticky Toffee Pudding Ice Cream
Freshly steamed sticky toffee pudding brings warmth on many a winter night, yet my wife's passion for sticky toffee pudding seems to be year-round. While I prefer to have my sticky toffee pudding served with a rather large dollop of Cornish clotted cream, a cool scoop of vanilla ice cream is prevalent. This summer, in facilitating my wife's cravings, it dawned on me that perhaps both ice cream and pudding could be incorporated together to produce a summery variation of a wintery classic: sticky toffee pudding ice cream.
Combining sticky dates and a luscious toffee sauce, this ice cream is rich and moreish. A hint of lemon cuts through the sweetness. Suffice to say, my wife approved.
This recipe requires the use of an ice cream machine and a food processor. If you want to take this to another level, you could make some sticky toffee pudding and layer it into the ice cream tub when decanting the ice cream for freezing. Don't worry if you taste the custard before churning and find it very sweet; it will be much less sweet once frozen.
Ingredients
- 225g dark muscovado sugar (use demerara or another unrefined sugar if you can't find it)
- 100g butter
- 25ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 175g stoned dates
- 250ml whole milk
- 250ml double cream
- 5 egg yolks
- 75g caster sugar
Method
- Roughly chop the dates and place them into a bowl just covered by boiling water, and put them to the side to soften.
- Combine the muscovado sugar, butter and lemon juice in a saucepan and stir over a low heat until the butter has melted and the sugar has completely dissolved.
- Take another large saucepan and heat the milk and cream on a medium heat, bringing it to a gentle simmer.
- While the milk and cream are warming, whisk the egg yolks and the sugar together in a large mixing bowl, then pour the hot milk and cream over the egg yolks, whisking constantly as you do.
- Give your saucepan a quick rinse, now return the egg and milk mixture to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. It should be thick and velvety.
- Once the mixture has reached its desired consistency, remove it from the heat. Use a food processor to blitz the dates into a purée, then fold them into the butter and sugar mixture before mixing both into the ice cream custard. Once fully combined, pour back into the mixing bowl you used earlier.
- Leave the mixture to cool completely. Once chilled, churn in an ice cream machine as per the manufacturer’s instructions.
- Decant the ice cream into a tub and enjoy right away or keep it fresh in your freezer for another occasion.
