Recipe: Cider Cider Donut Ice Cream

This post is kind of unseasonal, but my friend Melanie (also my partner at July Twenty Fourth!) is visiting from California and she's the one who suggested this flavor so I thought I'd perfect it and make it for her. Additionally, Husband has been giving me a hard time about the frozen cider donuts taking up room in the freezer. AND it's time to start churning for  the annual summer ice cream party.

Long story short, I present you Cider Cider Donut Ice Cream.

You need: 

• 6 egg yolks
• 1 cup of boiled cider (see below for procuring this!)
• 2 teaspoons of flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cider donuts cut into bite sized pieces

How to:

1. Beat the yolks, boiled cider, flour and salt, and set aside. 
2. In a saucepan, at medium heat, heat the milk to a simmer. 
3. Slowly beat the hot milk into the egg yolk mixture. 
4. Pour the entire mixture back into the sauce pan, and cook over low heat while mixing constantly until the mixture thickens. 
5. Once thickened, move the mixture from the stove, then pour through a strainer into a clean bowl.
6. Allow the mixture to cool for a bit and add the heavy cream.
7. Cover and refrigerate until cool.
8. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions. 
9. Stir in the donut pieces

(This recipe is adapted from one of my favorite ice cream books: The Ultimate Ice Cream Book: Over 500 Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, Drinks, And More)

How/where to get Boiled Cider:
First of all you need Husband. He is awesome at boiling down cider to syrup. Buuuuut, since I kind of need him here, I'll give you two other options.

Method 1:

While Husband cannot come to your house to do it for you, he has graciously agreed to share his method of making 1/2 gallon of cider into 1 cup of syrup (without burning it like I did the first time!)

1. To boil down your apple cider make sure you leave enough time. In our test it took about 4 hours to boil down a half gallon of cider into ~1 cup of syrup.Start with a pot that's just big enough to hold your cider. Unless you boil it over, the volume of liquid will only be going down. 
2. Boil the cider as fast as you can control. Check in on the boiling periodically and try to scrape any cider residue from the sides of the pot (that didn't burn) back into the mix.
3. As you start getting towards the end, be prepared to spend more time hovering over your mix and stirring. You do want to keep residue from forming on the sides, but the stirring at the end is more for your benefit than for the mix. Slow the boiling rate down considerably as you approach the final volume.
4. Determining when you are done is the hardest part. Cider molasses at about boiling temperature will be very liquid and flow well, but at some point you'll notice that it doesn't fall or splash like cider/water off your spoon. You'll also notice that if you temporarily crank the heat up, the bubbles will stack on top of each other and the whole mixture will rise up a bit.
5. At this point, you're done! The syrup is still hot so it will still flow very well. When it cools down it will be a thick syrup. The mixture should also taste sweet. If you really aren't sure, try cooling a bit on a metal spoon and giving it a look and taste.

Method 2:

Buy it. I have never used Boiled Cider but I have seen it at the King Arthur Flour Store. You can also buy it directly from the manufacturer's site, one of few places that still makes it.

Reviewed:

The reviews are in...Husband thinks it needs to be sweeter, which is really weird for him to say. He's usually not into things being really sweet.

Melanie says it's a very strong flavor with a punch to it. "A very strong tart apple flavor," she describes it. "That was yummy," she said when she put the bowl down. "A really, really good cider flavor."

 I don't think I would order a whole dish of this but a seasonal scoop would be really refreshing. It's not that I wouldn't order it because it's bad (it's really very good) but it's strong. It's very cidery -- which is exactly what I wanted to make when I mixed it. I think the donut bits are a really lovely cinnamony taste when you come across them in the cider base, too. (I got my cinnamon sugar cider donuts from Honey Pot Hill Orchard in Stow, Massachusetts...)