Cinnamon ice cream

Warming cinnamon and cane sugar in a delicate egg custard. It tastes like apple strudel, only frozen.

The cinnamon is steeped in hot milk so its aromas pass into the fat and the ice cream tastes rounded rather than dusty. Cane sugar adds caramel notes and a few yolks make the custard silky. It goes better with apple and plum cakes than vanilla does.

Type: Classic cream ice cream · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Moderate

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 550 g whole milk 3.5 %
  • 330 g whipping cream 33 %
  • 25 g skimmed milk powder
  • 5 g ground cinnamon (2 teaspoons; or 2 whole cinnamon sticks for infusing)
  • 60 g egg yolk (3 yolks)
  • 140 g cane sugar
  • 40 g dextrose (glucose powder)

Making the mix

  1. Heat the milk, cream, milk powder, dextrose and cinnamon until almost boiling. Take off the heat and leave to infuse for 20 minutes.
  2. Bring back almost to the boil.
  3. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar (or the part of it the recipe specifies) until pale and foamy.
  4. Whisking constantly, pour about a third of the hot milk mixture onto the yolks in a thin stream, then tip everything back into the pan.
  5. Stir over a low heat with a wooden spoon until the custard thickens and reaches 82–84 °C (it coats the spoon and a line drawn with your finger holds). Don’t let it boil, or the yolks will curdle.
  6. Immediately strain the custard through a fine sieve into a bowl set in iced water.
  7. Cool the custard, stirring now and then, press cling film directly onto the surface and age in the fridge for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.

Method — Compressor ice cream maker

  1. Switch on the ice cream maker 5–10 minutes ahead so the bowl can pre-chill.
  2. Pour in the chilled mix no higher than the fill line (with a smaller bowl, churn in two batches) and churn for 30–40 minutes, until it has the consistency of thick whipped cream.
  3. Transfer to a chilled container, press cling film onto the surface and leave to harden in the freezer for 2 hours.

Total time: 7 h 55 min

Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker

  1. Take the frozen bowl out of the freezer just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
  2. With the machine running, pour in the chilled mix — no more than two-thirds full; freeze the rest as a second batch.
  3. Churn for 20–30 minutes, until the ice cream thickens. There’s no point going longer — by then the bowl has warmed up.
  4. Transfer to a chilled container and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.

Freeze the bowl for at least 24 hours beforehand (until you can no longer hear the coolant sloshing inside). The mix must be thoroughly chilled.

Total time: 8 h 45 min

Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines

  1. Divide the chilled mix between CREAMi tubs, filling each no higher than the MAX line (a full batch makes about two standard tubs).
  2. Put the lids on and freeze on a level surface for 24 hours.
  3. Place a tub in the machine and run the Ice Cream program.
  4. If the ice cream is crumbly or powdery, run Re-spin (many users add 1–2 tablespoons of milk first).

Programme: Ice Cream

A standard tub holds about 470 ml, a Deluxe tub about 700 ml. Don’t fill above the MAX line, and freeze it level — the machine doesn’t handle an uneven block well.

Total time: 29 h 25 min

Method — No-machine method

  1. Pour the chilled mix into a deep metal or glass container (a baking dish, for example) and put it in the freezer.
  2. After 45 minutes, stir the mix thoroughly with a whisk, spatula or stick blender, working the frozen edges into the centre.
  3. Repeat every 30 minutes, 4–5 times in all, until the ice cream is thick and smooth.
  4. Leave to harden for another hour.

Without a machine you get more ice crystals and less air, so the ice cream is denser. Every stir breaks up the crystals, so don’t skip any.

Total time: 9 h 20 min

Stages

Preparation
15 min
Cooking
15 min
Resting
20 min
Cooling
30 min
Ageing in the fridge
4 h
Churning
35 min
Hardening in the freezer
2 h
Total time
7 h 55 min

Serving and storage

With warm apple strudel, baked apples, plum dumplings or pumpkin pie.

In a sealed container with cling film pressed onto the surface it’s best within a week; after that, ice crystals start to build up. Never refreeze ice cream that has melted.

Tips

  • Ceylon cinnamon is milder and contains less coumarin than common cassia — if you often serve this to children, choose Ceylon.
  • Ground cinnamon leaves a fine brown dust in the ice cream; for a perfectly smooth result, infuse cinnamon sticks and leave out the ground cinnamon.
  • A handful of chopped toasted walnuts added at the end of churning turns it into a winter dessert.

Sources