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A few years ago, with free time, I bought a refrigerator. I made vanilla and chocolate and more unusual flavors like cardamom from a Meera Sodha recipe. It was my equivalent of sourdough. I have nothing against baking, but I knew making ice cream would be more my thing. Basically I’m a cat. My guilty pleasure is a bowl of cream. If the cream is frozen, much better.
I enjoyed having my special gadget: a chrome Cuisinart ice cream maker that sat on my counter like a cement mixer. I experimented with infusions and flavors. The ice cream I made tasted better and cleaner than the store-bought varieties and I had bragging rights. But things got busier and I saved it for a rainy day.
Now a new book from Terri Mercieca, the Australian-born, London-based founder Happy endings, has prompted me to release it again. This ice cream and dessert company founded in 2014 is probably best known for its ice cream sandwiches. These include “The Naughty One,” made with Guinness cake, miso salted caramel and soy milk fudge, and “The Gay One,” inspired by Australian Golden Gaytime ice cream. The latter appears in his debut. The Happy Endings Cookbook: Desserts Dreams Are Made Of (Pavilion, £26) along with ice creams, sticks, chocolates and other puddings.
Mercieca is an ice cream nerd and revolutionary. “Baking has gotten all the love for too long, it’s time for ice cream to claim its crown as ruler of desserts!” she writes in the introduction. Having taught herself the basics, she formalized her education last year by enrolling in Penn State University’s ice cream school. Making ice cream is an “AF technique,” she says, “a dance of ice crystals, air bubbles, fat, sugar, protein and water.” And yet, “making your own is worth every minute.”
His book is aimed at both professionals and amateurs and is not limited to the geek. The final section “uncovers” the science behind ice cream making with notes on the relative sweetness and freezing point depression factor of various sugars and the percentage of nonfat milk solids in different creams and milks so that professionals can create recipes. while balancing sweetness and palatability.
Hobbyists like me run the risk of going cross-eyed when figuring these things out and may prefer to rely on Mercieca’s recipes, which are no more challenging than intermediate cake recipes. However, you must trust their use of certain processed ingredients. Their mango and passion fruit sorbet, for example, contains three different types of sugar: powdered sugar, dextrose, and atomized glucose powder. These help lower the freezing point without making the sorbet too sweet and result in a smooth texture straight from the freezer. The recipe also contains citric acid to enhance flavors and an optional stabilizer to slow crystal development. These ingredients may be common in commercial ice cream, but they rarely feature in cooking recipes.
However, a recipe has been created specifically for home cooks. “The Ultimate No-Churn Vanilla Ice Cream” requires no ice cream maker and features condensed milk (a staple of no-churn recipes) with evaporated milk, whole milk, double cream, skimmed milk powder, and golden syrup. It goes on easier than others I’ve tried and has a luxurious creaminess without being overly sweet.
I also made a malted milk ice cream and an acacia caramel sundae, mostly because I had never encountered acacia seeds before. The flavor of this Australian acacia seed combines chocolate, coffee and hazelnut, and was a revelation, especially when combined with a creamy caramel drizzle poured over the delicious malt-infused ice cream.
But no ice cream proved more worth the effort than Mercieca’s cocoa shell and lapsang souchong, made with a vanilla milk ice base (no eggs). First, I had to get cocoa shells, which are not the same as cocoa beans and usually come in tea form. These impart a more aromatic floral note than other cocoa products. Then I had to track down lapsang souchong, many varieties of which are now banned in Europe for health reasons. The process of infusing overnight, reheating, letting the mixture cool and mature, and then freezing took up to three days, at which point I was finally able to try it. Each spoonful was like a swirl of cigar smoke or church incense around my mouth, accompanied by iced hot chocolate and whiskey cream. I practically purred.