Homemade Blackberry Cobbler Ice Cream #Recipe by @LibbyKlein

   Libby Klein On my last posting day, I told you of my love for fruit desserts which sounds way more healthy than it is in my case. My other love is ice cream. Put the two together and BAM! I'm a happy girl. And I don't just mean for summer. I'd eat ice cream in January standing in snow at the North Pole. My favorite flavor is vanilla, but I'm very picky about my vanilla. If I don't see those little black specs I'm not interested. That's what coffee ice cream is for - when you don't have good vanilla. (Coffee ice cream was my gateway to drinking coffee - but that's another story.) 

A couple weeks ago, I got so excited over the fat juicy blackberries at the farmer's market that I bought too many. Then I made a huge blackberry cobbler. You can see the recipe here. It was after making this huge cobbler that I remembered - my kids don't live at home anymore. I'm gonna have to eat this whole cobbler by myself. I am not up to that challenge. I love desserts, but a little goes a long way with me before I'm emotionally moving on to the next thing. That's when I thought about folding the cobbler into my other favorite dessert. 

You might know that I used to have a professional ice cream batch freezer in my kitchen back when my daughter in law and I had an ice cream business. In spectacular timing that defines most of my life, we launched it right before covid hit. Needles to say it did not survive. But my love for making homemade ice cream far precedes 2020. And it all began with Alton Brown. This recipe is adapted from his Vanilla Custard.

Most of this is taken right from of Alton Brown's recipe with minor changes. My memory says that I learned about adding alcohol from Alton Brown's Good Eats episode on ice cream. It acts as antifreeze and keeps the ice cream from getting too hard. I also remember it being a part of the original recipe but when I looked it up, it is not there. But trust me. You will be happy you added the alcohol when your ice cream is the perfect frozen consistency.

Homemade Blackberry Cobbler Ice Cream

Ingredients:

3 cups half-and-half
1 cup heavy cream
8 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean scraped
½ cup vanilla rum (for anti-freeze)

Blackberry Cobbler (or any leftover pie or cobbler will do)

 Directions: 

Place the half-and-half and the heavy cream into a medium saucepan, over medium heat. Bring the mixture just to a simmer, stirring occasionally, and remove from the heat.

 

In a medium bowl whisk the egg yolks until they lighten in color. Gradually add the sugar and vanilla bean and whisk to combine. 

Temper the cream mixture into the eggs and sugar by gradually adding small amounts, until about a third of the cream mixture has been added. Pour in the remainder and return the entire mixture to the saucepan and place over low heat. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens slightly and coats the back of a spoon and reaches 170 to 175 degrees F. Pour the mixture into a container and allow to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. Stir in the rum. Place the mixture into the refrigerator and once it is cool enough not to form condensation on the lid, cover and store for 4 to 8 hours or until the temperature reaches 40 degrees F or below.

 

Pour into a countertop ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer's directions. This should take approximately 25 to 35 minutes. While the ice cream is churning, scoop your blackberry cobbler into little pieces and chill them. When your ice cream is thick like soft serve, stop the machine and spoon the vanilla ice cream onto the blackberry cobbler pieces. Gently fold them together until you have a nice swirl. Freeze for another 3 to 4 hours to allow the ice cream to harden.

I actually made a double batch of the frozen custard and ended up with three kinds of ice cream. A coffee ice cream with Kahlua and chocolate shavings, and caramel ice cream with caramel liquor and a caramel swirl. Let me know in the comments if you'd like me to post the recipe for either of these on the blog. And let me know what is your favorite ice cream flavor.

Gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister and her aunt Ginny are looking forward to a quiet, homey Christmas at their B&B in Cape May, but unfortunately, death isn’t taking a holiday this year . . .

Ever since Thanksgiving, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery of the romantic kind. But at least this mystery isn’t the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex’s restaurant—and he’s frozen, not fresh.

For once, it’s not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can’t escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn't labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her. Now, while Aunt Ginny plans a tree-trimming party and pressures Poppy to decode a mysterious old diary, the amateur sleuth is asked to “unofficially” go undercover at the restaurant to help the police. Until then, the only crime Poppy had been dealing with was Figaro’s repeated thefts of bird ornaments from the tree; now it looks like it’s going to be a murder-y Christmas after all.

 

Libby Klein grew up in Cape May, NJ where she attended high school in the '80s. Her

classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/