This is adapted from the Modernist Cuisine Coffee Creme Brulee recipe and from various ice cream recipes from the internet that are all basically the same with small variations in quantities.
Coffee Infused Cream
- 8 oz whole, dark roast coffee beans
- 16 fl oz Heavy Cream
- 8 fl oz Whole Milk
Combine in a container you can close and store in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
After 24 hours, remove the coffee beans from the cream.
Notes on this step:
I used a mesh strainer and a funnel. I imagine a coffee filter would be a mess
and is totally overkill since you have whole beans not ground beans.
I have a 32oz bottle and it doesn’t quite hold all of the milk during the
infusion step because the beans take up a lot of space. I just top it up after
the beans are removed. Final weight of the cream was ~720g after bean removal
and top up.
Coffee Custard
- 6 egg yolks
- 2/3rds cup sugar
- Coffee cream from above
Whisk 6 egg yolks until lightened in color.
Add sugar and cream and mix thorougly so sugar is disolved and mixture is
homogeneous.
Put custard base in vacuum bags / ziploc bags.
Sous vide at 176ºF (80.6ºC) for 1 hour.
Remove cooked custard bags from bath and refrigerate until cold or over night.
Notes on this step:
Whisking eggs took me about 5 minutes in the mixer.
We are making a custard here. The sous vide method is nice because you don’t
have to worry about your cream being too hot and curdling the egg yolk or
straining out little bits of curdled egg. Making a custard is something I am
bad at. If you don’t have an sous vide machine or immersion circulator
whatever you can make this custard the traditional way.
That would look like this:
Warm cream in a sauce pan and dissolve sugar into it.
Let cream cool to below 180ºF (82ºC). This is the temp that curdles egg yolk.
Whisk egg yolks until lightened in color.
Slowly add cream to egg yolks while stirring constantly. Which is to say,
“temper” the yolks with the warm cream.
Return to sauce pan and raise to ~175ºF (80ºC). The custard should “coat the
back of a spoon” which is nice and all but do yourself a favor and stir it
constantly and use a thermometer. If you get over about 180ºF you’ll be
enjoying scrambled ice cream.
Strain through a fine mesh strainer into a cold bowl / container.
Refrigerate until cold.
Coffee Ice Cream:
- Coffee Custard from above.
- Finely ground coffee (optional)
- Vanilla Extract (optional)
Prepare ice cream churn according to directions.
Churn until the ice cream has the consistency of soft-serve. Times vary.
Move ice cream to freezer to finish. Roughly 3 hours.
Notes on this step:
If you want little flecks of coffee so people get a hint of what’s in it and
the color is a little more coffee-like you can add a small amount of finely
ground coffee.
A small amount of vanilla extract might be nice here too. Add vanilla after
all of the cooking because vanilla flavor is mostly volatile organics that can
evaporate or degrade when you cook. Might as well get as much flavor from that
extract as we can. Probably not more than 1/4 teaspoon.
My churn seems to take longer than expected and this is a small batch in the
churn which doesn’t help. Mine took almost an hour to freeze and probably
could have gone another 20 minutes. A little longer in the churn can help the
post-freezer texture.