One of the stand out flavors that stayed with me after my first visit to Jeni’s was their black coffee ice cream. I LOVE coffee & try them all but most don’t have that strong hit of coffee flavor like this one does. I thought it was a natural choice for my first ice cream recipe.
I’m making this batch in honor of Tree House Humane Society of Chicago. We adopted from there a year ago & recently I won a raffle from them at a very special event. Last month they hosted a benefit where internet cat sensation, Lil Bub hosted her talk show live at Metro Chicago & I had so much fun! She’s even more adorable in person. Special guests were Bub’s dude, David Yow of the band The Jesus Lizard, & surprise guest Hot Doug! Lil Bub raised a lot of money not just for Tree House but for her own Big Fund for the ASPCA & I’m proud to have been a part of it. In the raffle prize box was an awesome Modkat litter box, toys, treats, catnip, a cat film fest tee & a half pound of Black Cat coffee beans. I’m not even sure who was more excited, me or our cats Zoe & Cameron.
Before starting, I read the tips Jeni shared on how to make great ice cream at home here. I read the entire recipe before starting as well. This is a great new habit I’ve gotten into this year. I used to just wing it & read as I went along but it resulted in missed steps, missed ingredients & things I should have done at the beginning that would have saved me loads of time. Lesson learned.
I gathered my ingredients
I used Intelligensia’s Black Cat Espresso beans, fresh ground just for this recipe. I really love the rich toasty caramel flavors it has.
The first step was to make a slurry with 2 TB of milk & 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons corn starch. A slurry is a thickening agent such as corn starch, flour, or tapioca mixed with a small amount of liquid & added to hot liquids to activate the thickening process. It’s important to cook anything you add slurry to in order to get rid of the raw flour flavor it sometimes has. In this occasion, it works best to mix your corn starch with room temperature milk. Keep the slurry off to the side.
Step two is to cream together 3 tablespoons of room temperature cream cheese with 1/8 of a teaspoon of finely ground sea salt. This is what mine looked like when it was smooth
I then mixed 2 1/2 cups of whole milk, 3 tablespoons light corn syrup, 1 1/2 cups heavy cream & 3/4 cup of sugar in a large 4 quart saucepan on the stove. As I heated it, I stirred to dissolve the sugars in the mixture. This should be brought to a rolling boil over medium high heat. I was very careful with this step because I’ve scorched milk before & it smells & tastes terrible.
Boil for 4 minutes to help remove any excess water from the milk. Water is the killer of smooth ice cream. If you must rinse & re-use utensils or containers in between steps, please dry them. You don’t want to waste the hard work you’re putting into not scorching your base.
When the boil is finished, remove from heat & stir in a 1/4 cup of coarsely ground dark roast coffee.
Give it a good stir & let steep for 5 minutes. It will look like this & smell amazing!
At this point, I added a dash of cinnamon to mine because it’s a lovely cool autumnish day here. After the steeping, strain your mixture through a cheesecloth lined strainer. I used a very fine mesh tea strainer & I think it did a great job.
At this point, pour the mix back into the clean & dried saucepan & bring to a boil again but this time for just one minute while you whisk in your slurry from step one. Remove from the heat once it begins thickening. Ladle some of the base into your bowl with the cream cheese & salt. Whisk quickly, adding a little bit more of the coffee mixture a minute or so at a time. I used the ladle because it was easier to control how much I was whisking into the cheese. Once the cheese has been incorporated with some of the coffee, pour it all into the large saucepan. All of your ingredients should be in the ice cream mixture now. Fold these together with a silicone spatula until smooth. Here’s what mine looks like
The official instructions say to pour the mix into a zip top bag & submerge in a large container filled with ice & water to cool quickly. I put mine in a glass bowl in the freezer to chill out of habit as that’s what I used to do with my sorbet mixes. I just can’t wait for ice cream. I’m not sure if it makes a difference but I’ll do the ice bath on the next recipe & see if it does. If any of you know, feel free to share.
After the mix had chilled for about 15 minutes, I stirred it & froze it for another 15 minutes or so until very cold. While it was chilling, I made sure my ice cream maker was clean & working. The one I have is a Rival 1 quart maker that I absolutely love but want to upgrade by the end of this year. If you have suggestions, I’m more than happy for the help picking a new one.
Here’s where the magic happens
The cats it turns out are not fans of the ice cream maker’s noise. It’s not even that loud but Cameron’s all the way at the front of the house in the computer room in the window. Maybe I’ll make catnip ice cream for them one day with the cat milk from the pet store.
Here it is churnin’ away. Is it ice cream YET?
Almost. Now it’s time to set it in the freezer to harden up. Right now it’s the texture of a really stiff Wendy’s Frosty. Except that it tastes incredible!!! It’s so smooth! It’s hard to wait but I know this will be worth it.
Now that the ice cream has had a chance to harden overnight in the freezer, I can honestly say that I’m very impressed with my first time efforts. It’s smooth & creamy but it does have some ice crystal feeling to it. Very small ice crystals, but ice nonetheless. Will definitely try the ice bath on the next batch.
Here it is all done
And in close up
This batch was a winner. Mike says it’s so good that he’d be fine if I only made this flavor. I really liked the dash of cinnamon in this. You can add anything to it & it would taste great: toffee bits, chocolate shavings, coconut, caramel.
Up next will be goat cheese roasted plum, a twist on the famous goat cheese & roasted cherries flavor at Jeni’s shops. Cherries unfortunately aren’t in season right now but plums are & they’re my favorite fruit. Can’t wait to see how that one turns out. 🙂
jenny and jeni 