pg. 164 Baby Alaskas with Liquered Apricots

When I began this ice cream conquest, I foolishly neglected to consult with Auguste Escoffier on the matter. You know Escoffier, right?...One of the forefathers of the whole "culinary arts" thing? Well, I finally decided to look through the English translation of Le Guide Culinaire and discovered his ratio for making ice cream. It honestly blew my mind.

Auguste Escoffier said to use 2/3 # of sugar and 10 egg yolks with 1 quart of milk (as opposed to the 4 yolk/1/4c. sugar/pint of cream I'm finding everywhere else). How the heck had I never thought to increase the fat via egg yolks rather than heavy cream?! This way, my product would still be creamy but without being overpowered by the "whipped cream" flavor. Not only that, but Escoffier's method involves cooking the yolks and sugar together to start...similar to the process of a Hollandaise sauce...which also means that I wouldn't have to reheat the eggs in the custard (aka decreasing my chances of curdling the milk). Why did we change these methods? How come, on every website and in every book I find, people have ended the traditional ways and made it so much more difficult to work with? Well, no more heavy cream for me! I will be creating custard by Escoffier's standards from now on.

I used Escoffier's method to make some vanilla ice cream with immense success. Beautifully rich, smooth vanilla ice cream that doesn't even need to sit out before scooping. I decided to use it in the Baby Alaskas recipe from MICID book I have been coking from, and it held up quite well. Here's how it works:

Baby Alaskas with Liquered Apricots

3T Sugar
4T H2O
1/2 c. dried apricots- roughly chopped
2T Cointreau or other orange liqueur
1 pint vanilla ice cream
6 large ginger snaps (I used oatmeal cookies...you want something big enough to cover the top of a muffin tin)
3 egg whites
1 c. sugar

In a small pot, dissolve 3T sugar in water. Add the apricots and simmer for 5 min. Take off heat and add the orange liqueur; set aside. Put a set of muffin tins in the freezer for 15 min, and remove ice cream from freezer for same period of time. Pack ice cream around the sides and bottom of each tin, leaving a cavity in the middle. Once each tin is lined with ice cream, return to freezer for 5 min.

Add apricots to the middle of each tin and cover with more ice cream. Apricots should be sealed in. Return to freezer until firm. Place a cookie on the top of each tin (bottom facing up). Submerge the bottom of the muffin tin in hot water quickly and turn the tin out onto a cookie sheet. Each little ice cream tower should be sitting on top of a cookie. Place cookie sheet in freezer with ice cream on top.

Whisk egg whites until stiff peaks form. Slowly add the sugar 1T at a time until meringue is glossy. Using a palette knife, spread a thick layer of meringue over each ice cream, making sure to seal where the ice cream meets the cookie. This is important, because you do not want the ice cream to melt and seep out. Return to freezer.

15 min before serving, preheat oven to 450*. Bake the Alaskas for 2 min or until the meringue is golden brown. Serve immediately.

pg. 225 Saffron, Apricot, and Almond Cream

Allow me to begin this with a resounding BOO! to this recipe. 1) I hate using cornflour in recipes. It alters the flavor, screws with the texture, and just...yuck. 2) Saffron? No. Not in ice cream. Never again. I didn't use the 1/2 tsp it called for because saffron sells for $85/oz. My chef let me snag a pinch of saffron from work, which was enough to flavor the ice cream but not really to color it. Thank God, because it is just not okay. The apricot, however, is amazing. Somehow the flavor was completely saved by favorite dried fruit, and all was well.

The one good thing about this recipe was that I accidentally curdled my cream. "How the hell is that a good thing?!" you may ask, BUT this book happens to say how to rescue curdled cream! And it works! All I had to do was plunge my bowl of custard into an ice bath and whisk until it stabilized...which only took like 30 seconds. I was quite fearful that the texture would not turn out okay, but I think it be the best texture I've discovered yet.

Saffron, Apricot, and Almond Cream

2/3c. dried apricots
4T Cointreau or other orange liquor (I used Patron Citronge)
1/2t saffron strands
1T boiling water
3 egg yolks
6 T sugar
2t corn flour
1 1/4c milk
1 1/4c heavy cream
3/4c unblanched almonds (lightly toasted)

Chop apricots into small pieces and put into bowl. Add orange liquor and allow to sit while making custard. In a small bowl, add saffron to the boiling water. Whisk together yolks, sugar, and corn flour together in a separate bowl. Pour milk into a pan and simmer. Temper milk into egg mixture and return to pan. Cook until thick, being careful not to boil. Add saffron and chill until very cold. Stir in heavy cream and churn until thick. Add apricots and almonds and churn until incorporated. Spoon into plastic container and freeze overnight.

While I still hold a bit of resentment for this ice cream, it is not as wretched as I expected it to be.