Maple Walnut Ice Cream

This recipe is for a traditional vanilla ice cream based on eggs and cream, with a maple and walnut flavor.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 4 egg yolks
• 200 grams or 7 oz powdered sugar / confectioner's sugar
• 1 tsp sponge cake stabilizer
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 5 dl or 2 cups of heavy cream
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 0.5 cup of maple syrup

Makes roughly 1.5 - 2 liters or 0.4 - 0.5 gallons of ice cream.

I realize there are simpler recepies out there for vanilla ice cream, but trust me when I say this one is worth the extra work. The flavor and texture gives this ice cream the real home made feel.

Start by gathering the ingredients for the egg and sugar base. Add eggs, egg yolks, powdered sugar and sponge cake stabilizer to a mixer. Mix thoroughly until color is close to white, and texture is fluffy while still runny.

When done, pour mixture into a new bowl and set aside, as you will be mixing the cream in the mixer next. Then clean out mixer bowl properly.

Add heavy cream and vanilla essence to mixing bowl. Mix until cream is thick. Mine did perhaps turn out slightly too thick, but it didn't compromise the end result. You can skip the vanilla essence if you plan on adding other dominating flavors later. The maple syrup might be one such flavor, but I always like to start with a complete vanilla base regardless of what else I throw in later.

Add the bowl of egg and sugar mixture back into the cream, and combine lightly. You could just use a spatula for this step as well.

Flavoring can be added at this point, or it can also be added as the ice is freezing. I decided to add nuts and maple syrup now, and then adding a touch more syrup as the ice cream was hardening, to give nice visible stripes of color.

You could also glaze the almonds by throwing them in a cast iron pan along with sugar and butter. This time I skipped this step.

The amount of nuts and maple syrup is up to you. I used about 1 cup of chopped nuts, but I recognize that some might find this to be too much. I also used about 0.5 cup of maple syrup in total. A quart cup in the mixture before freezing, and another quart cup as it was freezing. This might also be too strong a flavor for some. The best way is to add little by little and taste test as you go along.

If you have an ice cream maker, now is the time to add the mixture. If you opted not to add the nuts and syrup earlier, add then to the ice cream maker towards the end of the mixing/freezing. When done, scoop into a container and stick in the freezer.

When making ice cream without an ice cream maker, add mixture to a freeze proof box and stick in freezer. Remove from freezer and stir after 30 minutes. Now might be a good time to stir in flavorings if you didn't already.

This particular ice cream is very forgiving concerning the freezing phase. I found that even just putting the mixture straight into the freezer, and not paying much attention to stirring, I still ended up with a soft cream that didn't crystallize.

You will also find that this ice cream is softer than most store bought ice cream. Even straight from the freezer, it is fairly easy to scoop. The downside is it also seems to melt slightly quicker than other ice cream.

Time to enjoy all that hard work. So pull up a chair or hammock, and make yourself a nice scoop. You earned it.

I would love to hear what you think if you make this. Also, did you make any tweaks to the recipe? Let me know in the comments!