smoked honey mint choc chip ice cream by Serious Eats
When I began researching smoked desserts this smoked ice cream recipe from Serious Eats was the first that popped up. At the time I was looking for something quick and easy so the ice cream was put on the back burner. I wish I hadn’t done so and tried it earlier because it tasted unbelievable! The smoky flavour comes from smoking the cream at a low temperature. From there its a case of diluting the cream to achieve the right level of smokiness. Once you’ve done this it’s on to making the ice cream.
Using my trusty 47cm Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) to smoke the cream I loaded in about a 1/4 lit chimney full of charcoal and one chunk of cherry wood. The water pan was roughly 1/4 full and I used a disposable aluminium tray for the ice bath that fit snuggly into the WSM. The tray was about 5cm high. As you can see in the photo below I used 2 smaller trays to hold the cream. Although this setup wasn’t quite by design…
Originally I had a baking dish set to go however with the dish filled with ice and water, the cream trays sitting in the ice bath and the whole setup sitting on the top grate of my WSM when I went to put the lid on… turns out I should have measured the baking dish because the lid didn’t fit. On top of this little setback when I put the lid down some soot from the underside of the lid landed into the cream. After these 2 setbacks and a mad scramble to find a large disposable aluminium tray and some wipes to clean out the lid, the cream smoking was underway.
The WSM ran hotter than the Serous Eats’ recipe suggested at around the 190f mark. This wasn’t too much of an issue because at the end of the day as long as the cream temperature doesn’t go above 60f as the recipe suggests then you should be fine. Using one chunk of cherry wood approximately 5cm by 5cm in diameter the cream was smoked for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
When beginning the smoking process I followed the recipe and created the ice bath using ice covered with water however I found the ice melted too quickly. No doubt this was partly due to running at a hotter temperature than the recipe stated although when I replenished the bath with ice only I found this to work much better. The ice was replenished once more before I took the cream out of the smoker. There was a skin on top of the cream that was slightly black. I was able to skim this off quite easily.
When it came to diluting the smoked cream with fresh cream I ended up with a ratio of 60:40 fresh to smoked cream. This would need to be determined on a case by case basis depending on how much smoke you allow to get into the cream and of course how much smoky flavour you’re after.
I followed the remainder of the recipe to the letter. The result was amazing. The smokiness complemented the honey, mint and choc chip really well. The immediate flavour you taste is the smoke and then the other flavours come into play. I found this flavour structure similar to that of the first dessert I added smoke to, being brownies. The result was the same in terms of the smoke coming through first followed by the other flavours.
For our barbecue brownies with a hint of pecan smoke recipe click here.
Click here to head over to the Serious Eats website and find the smoked ice cream recipe.
