Thursday, May 6, 2010

Citrus Week Recipe: Avocado Lime Ice Cream

Since Mrs. Olsen has been yapping SaladThis and SaladThat I thought I should try to lighten up a little. Although I think it's an excellent idea, I am not completely off of sugar. My family is enjoying our little food revolution with whole foods and fruits & veggies, and so I'm feeling good about the occasional splurge. When my co-op baskets included avocados and limes recently, I decided to dig up an old ice cream recipe in this fabulous recipe book.


I'll be honest, this ice cream is not loved by The Mister of the House. So I only make it every couple of years, and try it out on fresh palettes so I can feel like a gourmet chef. So that book inspired me, but I changed it up a little to see if I could tone down some flavors and hopefully win over some new lovers of this beautiful green ice cream.





So yeah, there are eggs in this recipe. It's a common thing in ice cream, and totally freaks my mother out.







Get it back to 160 (with the eggs), then the food freaks can chill out.

This was a basic alteration of the recipe. Some ice cream recipes want you to heat up the cream with granulated sugar. I have found that sweetened condensed milk saves you the trouble of messing with cream that could get too hot while allowing your sugar to be perfectly dissolved. It makes a perfect flavor base for other ice creams like chocolate or peppermint. Anyway, back to our green dream...

Pull that pan off when it hits 160, then let it cool down to room temp. Then throw it in the fridge to chill. While that's happening, you can get your flavors ready.



After the custard base is cooled down, mix it in with your avocados, lime, and cream. Here's a picture of all of it together in my ice cream machine canister. I gave it one last stir before I rigged my old school machine up.



So my ice cream machine uses ice and rock salt. There are lots of newer and more expensive and cooler machines you can use. The good thing is, it's not even necessary to own an ice cream machine to make this recipe. I'll spill it out in the end when I give the actual recipe. Deal?



So then my moment of yearning for approval was upon us. I decided to let some tasters in on my gourmet ice cream with these simple rules:

Rule #1) You must take 3 bites before you decide how you feel about it.

Rule #2) You must use only 2 words to describe this ice cream.

Here's my tasters:



Aahhh. Dangit!



Sheesh. I thought the female would pull through for me. She said she liked it, but "guacamole-ey" didn't really convince me. It's okay Sara, keep feeding me every week and I'll get over it.



Mr. Gourmet Ice Cream Lover wasn't a huge fan. His word choice was....hmmmm, polite. We'll just say that much.



Aw crap. But alas, some of my blood came through for me!



So since toddlers are sugar freaks and will eat sugar granules if it's available, I wasn't feeling too gourmet-like when The Buddha Baby was the only one who really "yiked it".

Fortunately, the next day I played volleyball. My friend Toshia had asked me for this recipe, so I said "Hey, come over and taste it for yourself. But I have some rules while you eat it" and she said Deal!

So my last and final taster was Toshia.



Phew! So maybe I'm not completely nuts. This ice cream isn't for everybody obviously, but I think it's fun! Here's the recipe:

AVOCADO LIME ICE CREAM

3 RIPE AVOCADOS
4 SMALL LIMES (or 2 REGULAR LIMES)
1 (14oz) CAN SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK
4 EGG YOLKS (save the egg whites if you do not own an ice cream machine)
2 1/2 CUPS HEAVY CREAM

Put yolks in a bowl and beat until runny. Set aside. Heat up milk on medium heat until it reaches 160 degrees. Slowly drizzle egg yolks into milk and whisk while doing so. Get temp back up to 160 and then pull off to cool. Stir it up every once in a while.

Meanwhile, mash your avocados and grate the rind off of your limes. Then squeeze the juice from the limes as well.

Once your egg base is cooled, mix it together with your mash as well as your cream. Stir together in your canister and let the machine go to work!

VARIATION: If you don't have a machine, mix all the stuff and then put in freezer safe container. Pull out ever 15-25 minutes and beat up so ice crystals don't form. In one of your pulls, stir in reserved egg whites that are beaten stiff. Continue to pull out and beat until the entire mixture is at least soft-set (all frozen, but still soft). At this point, just let it continue to freeze and harden in your freezer.

Enjoy!

6 comments:

LGH said...

Hey, Amber, I think it sounds delicioso! And I like how you said you could only use two words to describe it...I like that! Gonna try that myself sometime on a new recipe.

Kelly Bryson said...

Haha. This wouldn't fly at our house. Nobody really likes avocadoes. Too bad!

This recipe kind of reminds me of the cookie dough gatorade skit on SNL. Athletes drinking blobs of cookie dough, pouring down their necks. Interesting. Thanks for the recipes!

Ms. Fish said...

my brother-in-law owns a sod farm, and when people come to visit, he makes avocado shakes... puts crushed up oreos on the bottom and then the green goop on top. (dirt, grass...get, it). They are delicious. And a beautiful color.

I'd try this ice cream. Sounds awesome.

paula said...

I think you should invite me back up to your house for some more taste testing. We make ice-cream a couple times a year...old fashioned way like you, ice & rock salt. We love it.

Remember that mango ice cream you told me about last year? Well-we went to the Indian market and got the mango stuff but I don't know how to make the ice cream. Can I get that recipe? Thanks girl.

Lee Family said...

That seems like a lot of work for a guacamol-ey tasting ice cream. I'm impressed with the way you can change up recipes, add your own ideas, and it turns out to be a better way to do it - impressive. I'm feeling Betty crocker-ish when I follow the recipe exactly. Jared will mock me because I'll follow a recipe to a tee until I start getting annoyed that's it's taking me so long so I'll just make up the last few steps but it's not a better way to do it and Jared will say, "Oh, you were so close." Which is a compliment. blah, blah, blah. that ice cream doesn't sound good - got to be honest. But, I love your food revolution - it's contagious. love ya.

Mrs. Olsen said...

Hey, my friend Darcie the garden nut came over today. She tried the ice cream and LOVED IT. Her kids did too. Soooo....?

Paula, the mango ice cream recipe is this:

1 can of keema matar mango
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups cream