Espresso Coffee Ice Cream

Oh excuse me. I have been too busy trying a few extra recipes this month, I lost my touch of 'story paragraph' in front of the recipes! I promise I will add them back... or maybe not. Well the story for this one is I <3 ice cream. Obviously, why else would I want to make them. Funny thing is everyone somehow associates me with liking ice cream a lot. But I'm actually not that crazy about it, I enjoy it and I only enjoy a handful of flavours. The flavours are always mint chocolate, chocolate, and coffee. So anything with chocolate and coffee I'm down for. Other flavours I don't like so much.

Why I chose my first ice cream making experience to be coffee flavour is because I am never satisfied with the grocery store bought coffee flavour ice cream. The ice cream or gelato shop ones are good but always buying a scoop or two. So with Haley's help (i.e. using her ice cream machine) I get to fulfill this want.

After trying this I might actually seriously consider getting a ice cream machine. It is very easy to use. And if it satisfy my specific ice cream cravings like my super strong coffee or some interesting asian flavour green tea and sesame, I'd be willing to spend the time to make some.

Espresso Coffee Ice Cream

Expresso Coffee Ice Cream served with Banana Bread

Ingredients:
1½ cups skim milk
¾ cup sugar
1½ cups whole coffee beans
Pinch of salt
1½ cups heavy cream (18%), divided
5 large egg yolks
¼ tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Steeping coffee flavour

After adding the egg mixture to the coffee bean mixture

Espresso coffee ice cream mixture before freezing in the ice cream machine

The final product

Procedure: 
1. Combine the milk, sugar, coffee beans, salt and ½ cup of the heavy cream in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.  Once the mixture is warm and just begins to bubble, remove from the heat and let steep at room temperature for 1 hour.

2. After steeping, return the saucepan with the coffee mixture to the burner over medium heat. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks until smooth.  Once the coffee mixture has become warm again, slowly pour the mixture into the bowl with the egg yolks, whisking constantly to temper the eggs.  Return the egg-coffee bean mixture to the saucepan over medium high heat.

3. Cook the mixture, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula or spoon (about 170-175° F.)  Pour the remaining 1 cup heavy cream into a large bowl and set a mesh strainer over the top.  Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream.

4. Press on the coffee beans in the strainer to extract as much of the coffee flavor as possible, then discard the beans (I first used a spoon to do this. But the colour of the mixture still seems a bit too light. So I took some coffee beans and blended it lightly and soak in the custard mixture with strainer. )  Mix in the vanilla and ground coffee or espresso powder.

5. Chill the batter over an ice bath, or in the refrigerator.  Chill thoroughly in the refrigerator and then freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Add semi-sweet chocolate chips in the last 5 minutes before the ice cream is done. Add more chocolate chips for decoration.

Source: adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz and Annie's Eats

Thoughts:
1. Very very rich flavours! I chose a dark roast espresso coffee beans, so 1 1/2 cups of beans seem a little too strong to eat by itself. It was prefect with my warm banana bread though. Although I like how strong it is. Probably can use less beans like 1 cup, or add another cup of milk or water to dilute it since this recipe yields more like 1L of ice cream.
2. Maybe next time try a lighter cream like half and half or 10% to lower the fat content even more. Also a shot of baileys may help with the freezing given the lower fat creams.