Ice Cream Fridays: Whoppers Ice Cream

 
Welcome to another edition of Ice Cream Fridays. Every Friday you can look forward to a new ice cream recipe which will hopefully inspire you to break out your old dust covered ice cream maker that is hiding somewhere in a closet (yes, I'm talking about you). Since I'm always looking for inspiration and ideas, feel free to leave me a comment here on my blog or on my facebook page, and let me know what ice cream flavor you would like to see. Who knows, you might just get lucky and it will be featured the following week.

This week's flavor is a treat for kids, and those who are still kids at heart. I didn't grow up eating Whoppers. In fact, I had never even tasted anything that resembled these little 3/4 inch diameter, chocolate covered, malted milk balls, which are produced by the Hershey company before moving to the United States. Looking at the ingredient list, you'll find out very quickly that these candies are certainly no health food. However, I do like to munch on them on occasion, and they are actually one of the few candies I will pick out of my kids Halloween baskets (shhh, don't tell them).

For this ice cream, David Lebovitz takes a simple vanilla custard base and makes it special by adding malted milk powder. This, in my opinion, transforms this dessert by making it actually less sweet and more creamy. With that, this subtly sweet, malted confection is the perfect canvas for chopped Whoppers. This is certainly not a hard ice cream to make if you are familiar with cooking a custard, but I could actually see this working just as well in an egg-less Philadelphia style base. The hardest part in this recipe was cutting the difficult little suckers (whoppers), who did not want to cooperate or behave on my cutting board.

My kids were extremely happy with this frozen confection, especially since last week's Date, Rum and Pecan Flavor was definitely "adults only". While the kids went to town on this dessert along with their friends, who I assume liked it just as much, considering how fast their bowls were emptied, my husband and I were able to steal a few bites and liked it as well. While I usually prefer a smoother ice cream, it was still fun to eat and felt like being a kid again!

Whoppers Ice Cream
(adapted from The Perfect Scoop)
(Printable Recipe)

Ingredients:

1 cup (250 ml) half-and-half
3/4 cup (150 g) sugar
Pinch of salt
2 cups (500 ml) heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup (90 g) malt powder (like Carnation)
6 large egg yolk
2 cups Whoppers (malted milk balls), coarsely chopped

Preparation:

Warm the half-and-half, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan. In a large bowl, whisk together the heavy cream, vanilla, and malt powder and set a mesh strainer on top.

In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer and whisk it into the malted milk mixture. Stir until cool over an ice bath.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. As you remove the ice cream from the machine, fold in the chopped Whoppers (malted milk balls).