Peppermint

Growing up, the holiday season did not begin until a healthy supply of Bobs' candy canes were acquired and the Christmas tree could be smelled throughout the house. But, now that I am living in an apartment, I do not have the conveniences of a mother to furnish the house with Christmas decorations and treats. This leaves me baking my own cookies, drinking bourbon/ eggnog (not a childhood tradition), checking out Creepy Santa Photos for the latest updates, watching Christmas Vacation, and making ice cream!

Thinking back to peppermint ice creams I ate growing up, there were always morsels of 'melted' peppermint candies in the ice cream. You know, the spoonful that you would get and find gooey pepperminty red streaks throughout? One of my goals when making the ice cream was to have these nuggets of flavor in every spoonful and that they would provide a little bit of crunch when you bit into it. Unlike the mint chocolate chip ice cream that you will find in the store, I did not want mine to have too much mint in the ice cream itself. Rather, I wanted the ground up mints to be the primary source of minty-ness.

The resulting ice cream came fairly close to my expectations of having the right amount of minty flavor contrasting with the vanilla cream base. However, and perhaps this was due to me wanting to use my food processor more often, the chunks of peppermint were either very very small or the size of half a mint. Looking back, I probably should have used either a rolling pin or a meat tenderizer to keep the mints from becoming dust.  In the end, I garnished the ice cream with some crushed mint and a large mint Christmas tree (instructions for this below).


Ingredients

Nutritional Info
Serving Size 1/2 cup Servings 8
Calories 420
Fat 26g
Sat Fat 17g
Carbs 19g
Sugar 29g
Protien 3g

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup half n' half
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 5 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp peppermint extract
• 1/2 - 2/3 cup ground peppermint candies 

Equipment

• Double boiler (1 inch of water in the bottom)
• Mixing bowl*Nutritional Info from:
  Livestrong.com/myplate
• Food Processor or Rolling Pin
• Sieve/ mesh strainer 
• Measuring Cups 
• Measuring Spoons 
• Whisk

Crack 5 eggs, separating the yolks from the whites and place the yolks into a medium sized bowl.  You can save the egg whites to use later in other recipes. For some ideas on what to do with them, check out David Lebovitz's blog here. Whisk the yolks so that they are well blended.

Heat 2 cups of cream and 3/4 cups of sugar over a double boiler. Once the milk and sugar mixture begins to steam slowly pour a third to a half of it into the egg yolks, whisking as you pour.

Once thoroughly blended, pour the egg yolk/ cream back into the double boiler and whisk. Pour in 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 1 teaspoon of peppermint extract and whisk.

Before pulverization

Let the mixture chill thoroughly before pouring it into your ice cream machine, I covered mine and put it on my balcony. While waiting for the mixture to chill, unwrap 1/2 to 2/3 cup of peppermints (I counted around 25ish). At this point you can either put them in a food processor or, place them in a plastic bag to break with a rolling pin. If you are using the food processor, do not remove the lid immediately as the 'dust' needs to settle. Alternatively, you can open the lid right afterwards and accidentally inhale a huge cloud of peppermint and cough up a lung- your choice (written based on experience)!

Freeze according to manufacturer instructions. As the ice cream firms up in the machine, pour the crushed peppermints into the bowl.

Garnish with melted peppermint Christmas trees, candy canes, gingerbread men, etc.

Preheat the oven to to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Place a Silpat on a cookie sheet along with a variety of metal cookie cutters. Place unwrapped peppermint candies into the cookie cutters, filling extra space with broken mints. Bake for 3-5 minutes until the peppermints have melted together. Remove from oven and let cool until firm. Once cooled, the candies should easily pop out of the cookie cutters.

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