The ice cream is smooth with a caramel tone from the brown sugar that is accented by the summer fruit compote. A great dessert!
This dessert was the highlight of one of those great days, which I might even call perfect.
My kitchen was as tidy as it can be, given the fact that I'm a hoarder of all things food related, from ingredients to gadgets to appliances; and I'm not including cookbooks, magazines, recipes, and blogs here because that is a post for another life. Well, it turns out they were pretty organized too.
I had already gone to the supermarket and it was overflowing with fresh cherries, pineapples, plums, peaches, and apricots, which then were overflowing my fridge. I was even having a very good hair day.
And then I remembered I had the brown sugar ice cream in the freezer. Could the day be any better? I was even going to make them a killer dessert.
As bright as these past days and weeks were, my dessert repertoire has included a lot of brown lately. I started with bourbon brown butter pecan pie, brown sugar cheesecake, brown sugar loaf with ginger syrup, and now brown sugar ice cream.
And you know what, they are turning out to be crowd favorites.
I found this recipe in Bon Appetit, and my idea was to serve it with a peach cobbler.
Today there was no time for that and I had so many fresh fruits I wanted to use them all. And I'm on a wok kick, so I used it to make dessert. Fruit in the wok. Caramelized in brown butter. With ice cream.
The ice cream has a very interesting caramel flavor with a molasses undertone, because what is brown sugar if not white sugar with molasses, right? So there is a slightly bitter aftertaste in the middle of that sweetness. I guess it's the perfect base to add some spices and make gingerbread ice cream.
So the caramelized fruits with brown sugar ice cream were the perfect end to a great meal and some well spent hours with dear friends. A perfect day in so many ways.
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Brown Sugar Ice Cream with Fruit
I decreased the sugar by ¼ cup and used just a tiny bit of vanilla. Since I was caramelizing the fruit I didn't wan't the ice cream to be too sweet. And a very small amount of vanilla intensifies the flavor of the caramel without adding another flavor.
- Total Time: 3 hours 20 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
Ingredients
For the brown sugar ice cream:
- 2 cups whole milk
- 2 cups whipping cream
- ¾ to 1 cup packed light brown sugar
- 6 large egg yolks
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla
For the caramelized fruit:
- 1 large peach
- 3 apricots
- 1 cup blueberries
- 3 Tbs butter
- 2 to 3 Tbs brown sugar
Instructions
For the brown sugar ice cream:
- Combine milk and cream in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat.
- Meanwhile put brown sugar in a clean saucepan, larger than the one with the milk, and melt over medium heat. It will be grainy at first and will start to come together and deepen in color.
- Be careful not to burn it. When it's a deep brown, which will be a few minutes since it's already brown, remove from heat and add the milk mixture. It will bubble up furiously. Be careful. Use a wooden spoon with a long handle.
- Return to low heat and stir until the caramel is completely melted.
- In a large bowl whisk egg yolks to mix.
- Very slowly add hot caramel mixture, just a bit at a time at first, so you don't curdle the eggs.
- Whisk constantly while adding the rest of the milk mixture and return to the same pan where you made the caramel.
- Cook it over low heat for about 5 minutes, until it starts to thicken. Be careful not to let it boil.
- Transfer to a clean bowl and let it cool to room tº. Cover and refrigerate until very cold.
- Process in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions.
For the caramelized fruit:
- Cut unpeeled peach into chunks. Do the same with the apricots and rinse the blueberries.
- Heat the wok and add the butter. It will brown immediately.
- Add the fruit, sugar and cook, mixing a few times, until it starts to brown and has a bright sheen.
For the assembly:
- Divide fruit between four bowls. Top each with one scoop of ice cream
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Freezing time: 3 hours
- Category: Desserts
- Method: Mixing + Freezing
Keywords: caramelized fruit, brown sugar ice cream
Ice cream barely adapted from Bon Appetit, august 1996
Minhaj khan says
Alas! Ingredients not available in my locality yet I am very curious about mouth watering recipes.
Grandbabycakes says
I made burnt sugar ice cream not too long ago so I know how amazing it is! The fruit is a really nice addition.