Ginger Ice Cream

Courtesy of Ovenly
Available at Veronica People’s Club, and Brooklyn Brewery in August

Agatha Kulaga and Erin Patinkin decided to start Ovenly, their pastry, snack, and confection making business—where they “adventurously explore culinary traditions”—after the first time they met at a book club potluck. Kulaga had baked her amazing pistachio-cardamom cupcakes and Patinkin her famed flourless chocolate cake. “We basically took a bite of each other’s pastries and were like, ‘Let’s go into business,’”Kulaga said. A week later, Ovenly was born.

The Ginger Ice Cream Recipe came about last summer after Patinkin’s mother sent her a four-pound bag of crystallized ginger from the ladies’ favorite Chicago food shop, the Spice House. With a little too much ginger for snacking, Kulaga and Patinkin on a particularly sweltering August daydetermined that the ginger would be best used in ice cream, one of their favorite treats to make during the hot summer months.

Ginger Ice Cream is great served with simple brown sugar shortbread, on its own, or with espresso for a new take on affogato (a coffee-based Italian dessert). One trick: freeze the crystallized ginger once you slice it so that the ice cream doesn’t melt at all when you add it to the ice cream maker.

GINGER ICE CREAM RECIPE

Ingredients:

6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup grated fresh ginger
2 tablespoons water
1 cup whole milk
1 cup half-and-half
1 vanilla bean
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup chopped crystallized ginger

Directions:

1. In a heavy bottomed pan, whisk yolks. In a measuring cup, combine half-and-half and whole milk. Scrape vanilla beans into milk mixture and then throw in the scraped pods.

2. In another pan, combine fresh ginger, water, and sugar. Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add milk/vanilla mixture, and bring to a simmer.

3. Take about a ladleful of the hot milk/vanilla/ginger mixture and slowly add it to the yolks, whisking briskly. Add one more ladleful in the same manner. Then, in a slow stream and whisking constantly, add the rest of the milk mixture to the yolks (this is called tempering).

4. Set heat to medium-low and heat yolk mixture to 170 degrees, stirring constantly. Do not let boil.

5. Pour custard through a sieve into cleaned bowl and stir in cream and vanilla. Cool custard. Chill custard, its surface covered with plastic wrap, until cold, at least 3 hours and up to 1 day.

6. Finely chop crystallized ginger. Freeze custard in an ice cream maker, adding crystallized ginger three fourths of way through freezing process. Transfer ice cream to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden. Ice cream may be made 1 week ahead.

Veronica People’s Club is located at 105 Franklin Street between Greenpoint Avenue and Milton Street. Brooklyn Brewery is located at 79 North Eleventh Street between Berry Street and Wythe Avenue.

Share