Sunday, October 16, 2011

Apple Pie Gelato with Caramel Stracciatella

We don’t drink a lot of juice at my house, but I couldn’t resist the amazing apple cider from Suprima Farms at the Lunenburg Farmers’ Market this week. As long as we were having a treat, I decided to go whole hog. And ended up with this:

Ingredients
2 ½ cups apple cider
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cinnamon sticks
2 cups heavy cream
½ cup milk
6 egg yolks
½ cup white sugar
½ cup caramel sauce (store bought or homemade—it’s easy! Try this recipe).

Directions

Heat apple cider in a saucepan over high heat. Reduce the cider to 3/4 -1 cup, stirring frequently. Remove from heat, add vanilla, stir, and set aside.

Place the cinnamon sticks in a closed plastic bag and smash to shards with a hammer. Combine cinnamon shards with heavy cream a in a saucepan. Bring mixture to a simmer over medium low heat and simmer, stirring frequently, for ten minutes. Remove pan from heat, cover, and set aside to steep for one hour.

After an hour, strain shards out of the cream. Return strained cream to a clean pan. Whisk in yolks and sugar. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently and scraping the bottom of the pan, until custard thickens, about ten minutes.

Remove custard from heat and whisk to combine with milk and reduced apple cider. Refrigerate mixture overnight, then process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Just before removing from machine, pour caramel sauce into the machine in a slow stream to form a ribbon. Remove to a container and freeze until hard, 2-3 hours.

This one passes the self-control test—as in, you won’t have any, so proceed with caution. Enjoy!