Rum and raisin ice cream

Egg custard with cane sugar and raisins soaked overnight in rum. For grown-ups.

The flavour was born in Sicily in the 1930s as “malaga” — after the raisins used in Málaga wine. The raisins soak up the rum and soften, so they don’t freeze into little pebbles in the ice cream. Rum also lowers the freezing point, so the ice cream has less sugar and still stays soft. Don’t add more rum, though — the mix wouldn’t freeze.

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

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 50 g rum 40 % (dark, 40 %; the raisins soak in it and what’s left goes into the mix)
  • 100 g raisins (for topping or folding in at the end, stirred in at the end, not counted in the mix composition)
  • 500 g whole milk 3.5 %
  • 350 g whipping cream 33 %
  • 25 g skimmed milk powder
  • 80 g egg yolk (4 yolks)
  • 130 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
  • 40 g cane sugar (dark (muscovado) has the best flavour)

Making the mix

  1. The day before, pour the rum over the raisins, cover and leave to soak (if you’re in a hurry, warm them with the rum and leave to stand for 1 hour).
  2. Heat the milk, cream, milk powder and cane sugar until almost boiling.
  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, press cling film directly onto the surface and age in the fridge for at least 4 hours.
  8. Drain the raisins. Stir any rum they haven’t absorbed into the chilled custard just before churning.

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 35–45 minutes, until it has the consistency of thick whipped cream.
  3. Add the drained raisins for the last 2 minutes.
  4. Transfer to a chilled container, press cling film onto the surface and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.

Total time: 8 h 45 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. Switch off the machine and fold in the raisins with a spatula.
  5. 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 30 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. Use a spoon to dig a well about 4 cm wide in the centre, all the way to the bottom, add about 35 g of drained raisins and run the Mix-in program.
  5. 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 13 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. At the last stir, mix in the raisins.
  5. 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 5 min

Stages

Preparation
20 min
Cooking
15 min
Cooling
30 min
Ageing in the fridge
4 h
Churning
40 min
Hardening in the freezer
3 h
Total time
8 h 45 min

Serving and storage

Ice cream with alcohol is softer — serve it straight from the freezer. It goes well with apple strudel or warm pancakes. Not for children.

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

  • The alcohol doesn’t evaporate during freezing — the ice cream contains about 1.5 % alcohol. Don’t serve it to children, pregnant women or drivers.
  • Don’t add more than 50 g of rum: alcohol lowers the freezing point about seven times more than sugar, and the ice cream would stay slushy.
  • Instead of rum you can use slivovica (plum brandy) or brandy; for an alcohol-free version, soak the raisins in strong tea with rum flavouring.

Why it works

Ethanol has about 7.4 times the anti-freezing power (PAC) of sucrose. 50 g of rum (about 17 g of alcohol) therefore softens the ice cream as much as over 120 g of sugar would — without making it too sweet. That’s why this recipe has a higher PAC and slightly less sugar than vanilla.

Sources