Valerie Lum - Ice Cream Happy Hour: 50 Boozy Treats That You Spike and Freeze at Home

Valerie Lum
Jenise Addison

Boozy Treats You
Spike, Freeze and Serve

Copyright text 2011 by Valerie Lum and Jenise Addison. 2011 Ulysses Press and its licensors. All Rights Reserved. Any unauthorized duplication in whole or in part or dissemination of this edition by any means (including but not limited to photocopying, electronic bulletin boards, and the Internet) will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Published by:
Ulysses Press
P.O. Box 3440
Berkeley, CA 94703
www.ulyssespress.com

ISBN: 978-1-56975-931-8
Library of Congress Catalog Number 2011922519

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Acquisitions editor: Keith Riegert
Managing editor: Claire Chun
Editors: Lauren Harrison, Leslie Evans
Proofreader: Barbara Schultz
Interior photographs: Judi Swinks Photography except Lily Chou
Cover photograph: Judi Swinks Photography

Interior illustrations: sundae
Design and layout: what!design @ whatweb.com

Distributed by Publishers Group West

NOTE TO READERS: This book is independently authored and published and no sponsorship or endorsement of this book by, and no affiliation with, any trademarked brand of alcoholic beverages or other products mentioned or pictured within is claimed or suggested. All trademarks that appear in ingredient lists, photographs, and elsewhere in this book belong to their respective owners and are used here for informational purposes only. The authors and publishers encourage readers to patronize the quality brands of alcoholic beverages and other products mentioned and pictured in this book.

I f youre reading this book we can safely assume two things:

You like ice cream.
You like spirits.

So do we. Wed like to say that the conception of this book came after a long night of pairing cocktails with desserts at our swanky restaurant in Manhattan. Sadly, the reality was not nearly as glamorous. Instead, it was on the floor of a cramped kitchen in a one-bedroom railroad in Brooklyn that the idea of alcohol-infused ice cream came to be.

Jenise and I had spent a long Saturday night at the boutique beer shop in Park Slope in Brooklyn where we work as cooks and sandwich assemblers. We had considered heading to our neighborhood bar after work around midnight, but thought better of it.

Doesnt a root beer float sound good right about now? I said.

Root beer? Try chocolate stout float! Jenise said.

We bought our chocolate stout and a pint of vanilla ice cream and headed to the closest of our apartments. The beer immediately went in the freezer for a quick chill before we poured it into frosty mugs with scoops of ice cream.

That hits the spot, I said.

After a few more floats, we were sprawled on the kitchen floor, rubbing our tired feet. It was in this state that I said, I wonder why they dont make beer ice cream?

Jenise, a professionally trained pastry cook, of course knew about the Guinness chocolate stout ice cream recipes included in most modern ice cream cookbooks. I bet we can make that, she said.

The next week, we were back in the tiny kitchen with an ice cream maker taking up all the counter space. Jenise had developed a recipe for the custard and had made it the night before. It sat in the fridge next to the bottle of Guinness Extra Stout. Soon we were eating a soft-serve Guinness chocolate stout ice cream.

This is brilliant, I said.

I think we can do more, though, said Jenise. I think we can get more beer in this.

While eating our fresh, homemade Guinness chocolate stout ice cream, we were already trying to figure out how to improve the recipe. We realized that the high water content in the Guinness was naturally going to lead to an icier ice cream, no matter how much fat from heavy cream or egg yolks we used to stabilize it. After much thought, Jenise realized that while working in pastries, she had often used gelatin to stabilize delicate desserts such as custards and mousses. It should keep the ice cream creamy, she said. And it should give it a good texture.

For the next batch of chocolate stout ice cream, we used an entire bottle of the beer instead of just 1 cup. We haphazardly added the gelatin to the custard. The ice cream became softer and creamier. We knew we were onto something.

With the method of beer ice cream well on its way to perfection, it seemed only natural to move on to stronger, boozier heights. As anyone who has ever stored liquor in the freezer knows, 80-proof alcohol does not freeze in a standard freezer. Nevertheless, I decided to try making a caramel spiced rum ice cream using 80-proof alcohol.

For the first batch, I whisked cup spiced rum into the custard to see what would happen. The ice cream did churn, but it was a bit icy. I tried it again with 2 tablespoons more spiced-rum, and the custard never quite set up correctly. Something else was needed.

It was then that I remembered college, and the house parties where Jell-O shots ran aplenty. I realized gelatin, the very ingredient we used to counteract the iciness of water and stabilize a beer-heavy ice cream, could also solidify 80-proof alcohol.

The actual process of developing a method for incorporating alcohol with gelatin, and finally the ice cream custard, took a lot of trial and error. There were batches with unappetizing chunks of alcohol-laden gelatin; one batch wouldnt churn because the alcohol wasnt cold enough; another was so bad a tester said it tasted like the bottom of a leather boot. But all of these mistakes helped us come up with a good system. We figured out that we can fit an entire cup of 80-proof alcohol into 1 quart of ice cream and it will solidify beautifully. It will also get you tipsy after a few spoonfuls.

As we developed more and more recipes, our friends started suggesting flavor combinations. We got so many, they didnt all make it into the book. But this is where you, the at-home ice cream maker, come in.

You can develop your own flavors. All you have to do is look at some of our basic recipes and adjust them. You can also learn from our mistakes, so please heed the notes that are in these recipes. We know all cooks love finding shortcuts, but a few of these can ruin your ice cream.

And we have to emphasize patience! If your ice cream maker requires a churning bowl to be completely frozen, that means completely frozen. The same goes for chilling custards and syrups before churning. And some flavors dont taste their best straight out of the ice cream maker, so give them a few hours in the freezer to allow the flavors to come together.

The point is, youre the ice cream chef now. You can call the shots in your own kitchen and pour the shots in your own ice cream. Have fun, be safeand dont scoop and drive.

Valerie Lum

C ustomizing your cocktail-inspired ice creams is a lot easier than you may think. You can take a lot of our base flavors, such as vanilla, chocolate, lemon, pineapple, and orange, and mix and match with various liquors and liqueurs to make your own fabulous treats. Dont be afraid to make your own boozy cocktail creations. After all, its ice cream and liquorhow bad can it be?

The Proof is in the Custard: The ice cream recipes in this book have been spiked with beer, wine, liqueurs, and a variety of hard alcohols up to 80 proof, including vodka, rum, gin, and tequila, among others. For recipes using one of these hard alcohols, we found that packet ( tablespoon) of gelatin was sufficient for an ice cream batch containing cup of 80-proof alcohol set up nicely. For the recipes that call for to 1 cup of alcohol, its best to use the full packet (1 tablespoon) of gelatin to stabilize the ice cream.