Coping with the Heat Wave!

For those of us lucky enough to be living in Toronto, or its surrounding area, have been experiencing quite the heat wave lately. With temperatures rendering drying off after a shower almost useless, it is very easy to say that we are all roasting like rotisserie chickens!

To help cope with this heat (and because I am slightly addicted) I whipped out my trusty ice cream maker to create some deeeeeeelicious ice cream! I assessed my current cravings and decided that coffee flavoured ice cream was the way to go! Having only had made ice cream at home a few times, I wanted to try something different and naturally that curiosity lead me to my favourite spot on the internet: Google! After some minor research, I came across a recipe for coffee ice cream on the Simply Recipes' Blog which is adapted from David Lebovitz's book The Perfect Scoop.

This recipe calls for some pretty simple ingredients: milk, sugar, whole coffee beans, heavy cream, salt, egg yolks, vanilla and finely ground coffee...

This sounded simple enough for the fact that I had everything except for the coffee beans (for some reason we had already ground all of ours at home!). As I was standing in the grocery store perusing the whole coffee bean selection, I realized that the flavour of bean chosen would change the flavour of the final product. I figured for my first attempt that I would stick with a flavour that I have adored for years: Vanilla Hazelnut.

Side Note: I feel that I must sing the praises of my ice cream maker and how fantastic it is to have one kicking around our house. I received this one as a Christmas gift from my best friend (Thanks Kathryn!) 2 years ago and sadly haven't used it very often. The version of this delightful machine that I was so lucky to receive actually came with two freezer bowls which really just means that it's twice as easy to make ice cream whenever you want (assuming that you have a freezer big enough to hold both bowls... I do not). Once the bowl is frozen, add it to the base, add in the paddle, put on the cover, flip the switch on and add your delicious creamy custard-y concoction and let er' rip! It's THAT easy!

Anyway, back to coffee ice cream! The cream is infused with the delicious coffee flavour and steeps for just over an hour. Maybe it's just me but I think that this is the most gorgeous demonstration of the wonder of food ever! Look how perfectly all the coffee beans just swim in the cream, milk and sugar mixture.

While this recipe is a little more labour intensive that most ice cream recipes I've seen, I promise you this is worth every single second of it. Having enjoyed my share of ice cream over the years, and having worked for Laura Secord I am quite familiar with commercial ice cream and have come to love them all. But the flavour of this ice cream all on its own, without any strange ingredients or things that one can't pronounce, is mind blowing! It is truly incomparable and should be experienced by all!

After the infusing and mixing, the coffee custard is churned through the wonderful ice cream maker for about 25 minutes at which point you end up with delicious soft serve consistency ice cream. If you put it in a container and freeze it for a while, you'll have wonderfully scoop-able ice cream that looks like this (when served over delicious cheesecake with berries):

All I can say is as soon as you have a moment, make this ice cream! It could change your life!!!

Happy Cooking!

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