Drowning Yourself in Alcohol and Ice Cream Makes Things Worse?... Or Better!

Have you made a decision yet? I get that question a lot. I rarely have an adequate answer to it. Some people choose to drown their decision making sorrows in ice cream, others choose alcohol. Well I like to go big or go home so I opted to make a recipe that called for both, or to adapt it so that it did: Apple Crisp Ice Cream with Grand Marnier. I don’t know if it was the ice cream that helped my decision making or something else entirely, but I’ll definitely make it again to test the theory that it was the ice cream. I actually made this recipe last week but have been slow on posting lately due to some other preoccupations. Things should pick up now though as I finally got a shove into motion. I probably wouldn’t have done it on my own, so thanks for the push, mumble mumble.

Andrew of Spittoon Extra is hosting this month’s round of Sugar High Friday and has chosen Drunken Apples as the theme. SHF was originally created by Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess and it’s now in its 35^th round so coming up with a new theme is beginning to be a challenge. I thoroughly approve of Andrew’s choice of apples and alcohol and when I saw this recipe in Food & Drink magazine for Apple Crisp Ice Cream I knew it could easily be adapted to include alcohol, especially one as good as Grand Marnier.

Apple Crisp Ice Cream (Adapted from Food & Drink, Autumn 2007)

Apple Crisp

2/3 cup regular oats

½ cup packed light brown sugar

½ cup all purpose flour

½ tsp ground cinnamon

Dash fine salt

1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted

2 cups peeled and diced apples

¼ cup sugar

Zest of one orange

Preheat oven to 375F.

Toss oats, brown sugar, flour cinnamon, salt and orange zest to combine. Add melted butter and stir to blend. Toss apples and sugar and pour into an 8-inch square or round baking pan. Crumble crisp topping over fruit and bake for 20 minutes, until apples are tender. Cool and then chill completely.

Ice Cream

1 ¼ cups 2% milk

4 large egg yolks

5 T sugar

1 tsp cornstarch

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

½ tsp ground cinnamon

1 ¼ cups whipping cream

¼ cup Grand Marnier

Heat milk to just below a simmer. Whisk egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch in a separate small bowl. Slowly add hot milk to yolks, whisking constantly, until all milk is added. Return mixture to pot and stir with a wooden spoon over medium-low heat until custard has thickened and coats the back of the spoon, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat, strain, then whisk in vanilla and cinnamon. Whisk in whipping cream and Grand Marnier and chill completely.

Freeze mixture in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Spoon in the apple crisp near the end of churning and then scrape the entire mixture into a non-reactive container and freeze until firm.

Technorati Tags:

Apples + SHF + Grand Marnier + Ice Cream