Tiramisù ice cream

Hello hello hello!

Long time no see!

Hope you are all well, friends.

For those of you not following me on instagram, you may have been wondering where I’ve been these past three years. Well, I had a baby! Aris was born on 5 July 2019, he is two years old now, and what can I tell you, time flew.

 

As you can understand, the blog and cooking in general had, and has, taken a back seat, to say the least. Cooking to feed my toddler is like a full time job, with five meals a day, so I don’t really have the energy to cook elaborate dishes that would be of any interest to you, the dear readers of this little blog of mine.

Even when I do manage to cook something of notice, alas, there’s rarely time to take any decent photographs or write down the recipe, and to be honest, sitting down to write a blog post seems difficult and time-consuming. So what’s changed and I am here now? A reader told me the other day how much she misses my recipes and posts here on my blog, and apart from being flattered and touched, it also made me want to revive my blog as soon as possible. I said to myself: “You need to get back!”. In order to do that, however, something has to change, so I decided to keep my posts short and sweet and I do hope that you will still enjoy them.

 

So, here I am; with a recipe for this gorgeous tiramisù ice cream that’s utterly delicious. It has a mascarpone, Kahlua and brandy base and a mocha syrup that runs through it, making it incredibly luxurious. It’s creamy, smooth, rich, sweet but not cloyingly so, and the syrup is sticky and shiny with an intense coffee flavor. There’s something you need to know about this ice cream, though; the alcohol content is high! Not that that’s a bad thing, eh? Considering we are still going through a pandemic, a little booze will definitely not hurt us.

Hope to be back soon with more recipes, as I have already started photographing and cooking a bit more, and yes, damn it, it’s good to be back.

 

 

 

 

Tiramisù ice cream

This is the prefect ice cream dessert. It contains the sweetness, the booze and the coffee you need after a meal, all in one. 

 

Yield: about 1 kg

 

Ingredients

for the ice cream

450 g mascarpone

125 ml cream, full-fat (35%)

125 ml whole milk

130 g caster sugar

Pinch of sea salt

60 ml Kahlua (or other coffee-flavored liqueur)

40 ml brandy

for the mocha syrup

100 g caster sugar

80 ml agave syrup

50 g Dutch-processed cocoa powder

125 ml strong espresso (already brewed coffee), or 125 ml water mixed with 1 Tbsp espresso granules)

½ tsp pure vanilla extract or paste

 

Special equipment: food processor, ice cream machine

 

Preparation

for the ice cream

In a food processor, add all the ingredients for the ice cream and puree until the sugar is dissolved and you have a smooth mixture. Empty in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge until it has really chilled. Then, churn in your ice cream machine following the manufacturer’s instructions.

for the mocha syrup

As the ice cream base is chilling in the fridge, make the mocha syrup.

In a medium-sized saucepan, add the sugar, agave syrup, coffee (or water + coffee granules) and cocoa powder, and cook over a medium heat, whisking constantly until the mixture begins to slowly boil. Continue to cook, whisking constantly, for 1 minute, and then remove the pan from the heat. Add the vanilla and stir. Empty the mixture in a clean bowl and allow to cool completely. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge until the syrup has really chilled. In order to use it, it needs to be really cold, as it is easier to hold the swirl and not dissolve in the ice cream base.

Note: use only ¾ of the mocha swirl in your ice cream because it’s a lot. The rest you can keep in an airtight container in your fridge for about 2 weeks and you can use it in your coffee, in smoothies, over other ice creams or pancakes or waffles, you name it!

Mixing the two ice cream components

Right before the ice cream is churned, add a generous amount of the mocha syrup at the bottom of a container that you will use to store the ice cream in the freezer. I used enough syrup to cover the bottom of my container. Then add a generous layer of the churned ice cream on top. Continue alternating layers of syrup and churned ice cream, finishing with the mocha syrup. I made 6 layers of mocha syrup in total (so 5 layers of churned ice cream). Don’t be tempted to mix the layers together or stir to do a marble effect like you would with cakes because the ice cream will turn out a weird color without the distinctive ripples thus without distinctive flavors.

Cover the ice cream either with plastic wrap or a lid and place in the freezer until the ice cream firms up.

Keep it in the freezer for a week or so.

 

 

• Barely adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz