This Vanilla Bean & Maple ice-cream recipe and all but the image of the sticks are from my original website. It was first published in April 2016 and I made it again for Christmas. It’s as wonderful as I remember it to be.
For Christmas I made ice-cream sticks. To make them a bit special, I added chopped Toblerone chocolate just before it finished churning.
They were amazing. The Toblerone added a milk chocolate and hazelnut crunch. They went down well with kids and adults alike!
But let’s cut to the recipe. More about this recipe can be found below. Please keep scrolling and if you make this, do share, tag and comment below.
Vanilla Bean & Maple Ice-Cream
Creamy and sublime, this vanilla bean and maple ice-cream will have you dreaming of luxury and sultry nights.
1
litre25
minutes40
minutes6-8
Hours or overnightClick for the screen to stay active while you cook
You will need
1.5 cups 1.5 milk
1.5 cups 1.5 pouring cream
8 8 free range egg yolks
1 tablespoon 1 organic coconut sugar or caster sugar
2 2 fresh vanilla beans, split
1/2 teaspoon 1/2 pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup 1/2 good quality pure maple syrup
Good pinch of sea salt (about 1/4 teaspoon but no more!)
Here’s what to do
- Pour all the milk and 1.5 cups of the cream into a saucepan. Add sea salt. Reserve the remaining cream.
- Scrape the seeds from the split vanilla beans and add them, along with the pods, to the milk.
- Warm the milk over a gentle heat until it’s just at simmering point – but don’t let it boil. Cover and stand for 10 minutes to infuse it with that vanilla magic.
- Pour the reserved half cup of cream into a large jug or other pouring container. Pop into the fridge until ready to use. Have a sieve that fits the top ready to go once the custard is cooked.
- Place the egg yolks into a mixing bowl and add the sugar. Beat on high speed until creamy.
- Once the milk/cream has sat, remove the vanilla beans from the milk and set aside.
- Ensure your saucepan is easy to pour from and gently pour the hot milk into the whipped egg yolks. Do this very slowly because if you pour too fast the egg will curdle with the heat and you’ll have to start again.
- Once the milk and eggs are thoroughly mixed, return them to the wiped out pan and place over gentle heat or water bath.
- Stir the mixture constantly with either a wooden spoon or whisk until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. If you have a thermometer, make sure you don’t let the temperature go over 75C / 167F or it will start to taste eggy.
- Remove the cream from the fridge, place a fine strainer over the top. Pour the custard into the jug with the cream and add the maple syrup.
- Stir to combine the cream/syrup, then return the vanilla beans back to the bowl/container if you wish. It’s a good idea to immediately sit in an ice bath or very cold water in the sink for a few minutes to rapidly cool.
- When cool enough to refrigerate, cover the top of the custard with cling film, gently pushing right onto sit touching the top of the custard. This prevents a skin from forming on the top and it can be scraped when being removed.
- Refrigerate until it’s chilled – 4-6 hours or overnight.
- Time to churn
- This ice cream works best when churned in an ice-cream maker, so if you own one, churn according to manufacturer’s instructions.
- Remember
- If your ice-cream churner is one with a bowl you need to pre-freeze, remember to place that in the freezer overnight.
- Once churned, spoon into a freezer safe bowl and place in the freezer until ready to eat.
Tips and tricks
- Avoid using cream that’s thickened with gelatine. I find a nice pouring cream with about 38% milk fat content works best.
- Pimp up your ice-cream with the addition of some chopped chocolate, nuts or even chopped hazelnut praline for extra flavour and texture.
- You could add a tablespoon of brandy or a nut liqueur if you’re serving to adults.
About my Vanilla Bean & Maple Ice-Cream
This recipe was posted on my original blog, 21 April 2016. It came about because I wanted to explore how to incorporate two of my favourite food ingredients. And I wanted it to be ice-cream.
So many people know and love vanilla bean ice-cream. The best quality vanilla-bean ice-cream is gorgeous, to say the least. It has enough going on on its own to be perfect with pies and tarts and chocolate cake. Mmmmm.
But when you swap out the white sugar with with coconut and throw in maple syrup, something amazing happens.
Good heavens, the ice-cream just soars to new heights. Seriously, the depth of flavour is sublime.
Below is exactly what I posted back in 2016. Since then I’ve upgraded my ice-cream churner to a Cuisinart with a built in compressor. I love using the gelato paddle with this as the texture is so much lighter.
The one I originally had was a Krups, with a bowl that needed freezing for 24 hours before churning. It worked well and was nice and compact, but I must say the Cuisinart is very convenient.
The original recipe post, 21 April 2016
Two of the food ingredients I simply adore are maple syrup and vanilla beans. I mean adore. The smell of vanilla is just heavenly and maple syrup has a depth of flavour that nothing else comes close to.
For ages I’ve been wanting to pair the two into ice-cream, but just haven’t had the egg yolks floating around to cook with. The opportunity arose after clarifying a big pot of chicken stock the other day with eight egg whites, so I seized it and set about making the dreamy custard base.
David Lebovitz’s ice-cream recipe method is the one I use for the majority of my custard-based ice-creams, although I do tend to reduce the amount of sugars in my versions because I find David’s recipes far too sweet for my palette. If you want to increase the sweet factor in my adaptions, then go for it. For the record, I used coconut sugar in place of cane sugar in this recipe – it has a lower GI factor and is therefore supposed to be much better for you than refined cane sugar.
As an optional extra, I also toasted some hazelnuts to churn through the ice-cream, but then decided not to – so the addition of nuts would also be good in this recipe or you could sprinkle freshly toasted nuts over the top.
I’d be happy to serve this ice-cream to any chef and am confident I’d see them swoon.
