Episode 52 – Saffron Ice Cream

Episode 52
May 29, 2011
Saffron Ice Cream

Summertime is almost here and with warm weather comes one of my favorite desserts: ice cream!  Ice cream is surprisingly easy to make as long as you have the right equipment.  This recipe is made using a French-style base and can be easily altered to reflect whatever flavor you may have in mind.

A French-style ice cream is a custard that contains eggs and is cooked.  American-style ice cream on the other hand does not contain eggs and does not need to be cooked.  The French-style ice cream base is basically the same an creme anglais – which is milk and sugar brought to a boil, added to eggs, then cooked to nappe (180 degrees F).  After that it is strained and cooled in the fridge and then frozen in the ice cream machine.  See – pretty easy!

This ice cream is really easy to flavor because of the fact that the milk is boiled on the stove.  At this point you can infuse a variety of flavors – like cinnamon sticks.  You can also add extracts, oils, and liquors to flavor your base as well – after the eggs are cooked to nappe.  If you add the flavoring agents too soon you may actually cook it out, so add your extracts, oil, and liquors at the end.  One important thing to keep in mind is that liquors don’t freeze very well so don’t use too much of it to flavor your ice cream otherwise your ice cream will never freeze in the freezer.

A lot of people ask me how I came up with the idea to use saffron to flavor ice cream.  It’s actually not a very profound story as some people might think it would be.  My roommate from college had a friend that visited India and brought back lots of saffron.  Her friend gave her some of that saffron – much more saffron than we would ever really need.  So we began experimenting with different ways to use the saffron and one of the ways I came up with was ice cream.  It was easily one of my favorite ways to use the saffron.  Saffron has a warm earthy flavor that is nutty and vanilla at the same time.  I personally think the ice cream has a caramel, rum raisin, and vanilla flavor but some people think I exaggerate.

You may be a little alarmed at how expensive saffron is in the grocery store.  Go to International Food Markets or small food marts that specialize in Middle Eastern cuisine (I get my saffron from an Afghani food mart for example) and the saffron will be significantly cheaper – and you’ll get way more.  Remember that saffron, like all dry spices, will lose potency over time so you may have to use more and more as time goes on.  When you first buy saffron though it should be extremely potent – for this recipe you should be able to use as few as 3 strands of saffron but as many as 10.  As it gets weaker you’ll need to double or triple the amount.

Anyway, here is the recipe for Saffron Ice Cream and below is the video!  Thank you for watching!