Brown Bread Ice Cream!!

Yes Brown Bread Ice Cream - I have not made ice cream for the blog before - mostly because I haven't come across a specifically British recipe for ice cream - but I found one and this is it. Victorian cooks developed the recipe to use up leftover brown bread from the day before - ever conscious of not being wasteful. I used a custard base for the ice cream because I'm a custard base kind of girl - especially if you can use duck egg yolks - they are divine in ice cream. It is not too sweet - which I like in an ice cream.

I also made my own brown bread from King Arthur's No Knead Brown Bread recipe HERE - it was excellent and SO easy to make, to be honest it tasted almost a little cakey itself so it was a perfect bread to use. I used half the recipe, did it in weight because that is so much more reliable, I left out the dried milk because I didn't have it and I was brave and didn't replace it with anything and replaced the orange juice with more water - just because I didn't have orange juice around - you can go whichever way you want, but of course! 

Six delicious ingredients

CINNAMONY BREAD CRUMBS:

4ozs bread crumbs - just tear the bread into the size of pieces you see above - don't make the breadcrumbs in a blender - the crumbs will be too small and you want them a nice size to provide the crunch in the finished ice cream

2oz butter - I would definitely use salted as it gives that nice pop with the caramel on the crumbs

1 teaspoon cinnamon - I am not a big cinnamon person so I did less than the recipes called for (I made an amalgamation of recipes) you can add maybe another 1/2 teaspoon if you are big on the flavour.

4 tablespoons turbinado/brown sugar

1. Melt the butter, sugar and cinnamon in a frying pan until it sizzles then add the crumbs and stir around until you have a really nice crisp and brown on the crumbs as below:

Sizzling in the pan!

The finished crunchy, yummy cinnamony deliciousness - let them cool after they have fried and really try hard not to eat them all - don't forget you need them for the ice cream!!

CUSTARD BASE adapted from Martha

20 fluid ounces/ 2 1/2 cups half and half

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

6 oz/ 3/4 cup brown sugar

4 egg yolks - either hen or duck - if the duck eggs are big you could get away with 3 

1. Beat together the egg yolks, vanilla and sugar in a bowl.

2. Gently heat the half and half in a saucepan to almost boiling.

4. Stir a little of the hot milk into the egg mix and then a bit more to temper the eggs.

5.  Then slowly whisk the egg, sugar, vanilla into the hot 1/2 and 1/2 in the saucepan.

6. Stir and stir and stir with a wooden spoon - if you stop stirring the custard will curdle and all will be lost - until it starts to thicken and coats the back of the spoon - take the spoon out of the custard, turn the spoon over, run your finger through the custard and if the line doesn't fill back in it is ready.

7. Take off the heat immediately and put the pan into a bowl of cool water and stir until the custard starts to cool. Cool completely and then pop into your ice cream maker and follow your machines instructions to make a divine ice cream. 

Now all you have to do is stir the breadcrumbs into the ice cream and Bob's your Uncle you've got Brown Bread Ice Cream!! It's delicious - I let mine sit in the freezer overnight and the crunchy bits got just a little soft - which I like - it is so good!!!

If you make it let me know and feel free to post pictures on my Facebook page.

HAPPY CHURNING!!