Peanut Butter Ice Cream

I had two things going on in my mind.  1) I would really like some ice cream.  2) But, I still have holiday candy to eat.

Yes, I had made a large batch of the haystacks, found in this blog post.  For Christmas, I made them more as my favorite cornflake candy, with Kashi flakes.  How could I in good faith make ice cream when I already had sweets in the house?  Ding Ding Ding I could make ice cream with the candy in it!  That uses up candy and gives me ice cream.  Yeah!  :)

I had cornflake candy with chocolate, coconut, and peanut butter.  I decided to make peanut butter ice cream.  Mmmm peanut butter.

Again I used The Ultimate Ice Cream Book by Bruce Weinstein.  The only changes I made to their basic Peanut Butter Ice Cream recipe is to use natural peanut butter and organic, unrefined sugar.  I find that natural peanut butter works just fine.

Here I'm breaking their recipe into steps for you.

Peanut Butter Ice Cream

Step 1
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs

In a  medium mixing bowl, beat the sugar into the eggs until thickened and pale yellow (if you use the darker organic sugar the color will be darker).  Set aside.

Step 2
1 cup milk

Bring the milk to a simmer in a heavy saucepan. Slowly beat the hot milk into the eggs and sugar.  Pour entire mixture back into pan and place over low heat.  Stir constantly and cook slowly until mixture thickens slightly.  Be careful, if you are in a hurry here and turn the heat to high you are likely to scramble the eggs.

Step 3
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 1/2 cups heavy cream or 1/2 and 1/2
2 teaspoons vanilla

Remove from the heat and beat in the peanut butter.  Pour the hot custard through a strainer into a clean bowl.  After cooling slightly, stir in the cream and vanilla.

Cover and refrigerate until cold or overnight.

Freeze the chilled custard per your ice cream makers instructions.  If adding candy of any kind, chop it up and add it to the ice cream maker about 3/4 of the way through it's freezing process.

I use a thick and sturdy tupperware container to hold the ice cream in the freezer.  A key to homemade ice cream is to cover it with a piece of saran wrap tight to the ice cream and then put the top on the container.  This keeps ice crystals from forming on the top of your ice cream.

And a few hours later, you have ready to eat ice cream!

So in the future when you have leftover candy (Halloween?) make ice cream!  Inspired, right?!?  Now I have to go work out...