Vanilla Gelato with Chocolate Malt Cookies

I am proud and excited to announce that I am now the owner of an ice cream maker. No longer do I have to look longingly at all the ice cream, sorbet, and frozen yogurt recipes I see. No more will I read about them and think, well, some day. Having an ice cream maker during the heat of the summer is turning out to be a terrific thing, but I suspect I’ll be using it regularly throughout the whole year. I chose the Cuisinart model, just like the one Ina uses, because it’s small enough that I should be able to find a place to store it in my tiny kitchen. I’ve been using it almost constantly since I got it, but if I ever need to store it, I’m sure I’ll find a place. For my first use of the new machine, I followed Michel Roux’s recipe which includes one batch of creme anglaise and then some added cream. Six egg yolks were involved, and at the end of the churning time, I added some fresh cherries. It was a rich, creamy, and decadent cherry-vanilla ice cream. That was a great test run, and next, I decided to try the vanilla gelato found in Demolition Desserts. In the book, Elizabeth Falkner explains that she prefers a pronounced salt flavor in her vanilla gelato. So after the custard base is chilled, salt is added until you can taste it.

To begin the custard, two egg yolks were whisked with cornstarch. In a saucepan, milk, sugar, corn syrup, and seeds from one half of a vanilla bean were heated just to a boil and then used to temper the eggs. The mixture was returned to the saucepan and heated for a few minutes. This custard base was then chilled in a measuring pitcher set in a bowl of ice water. Once cool, a cup of cream was added along with salt to taste. After the finished mixture was chilled in the refrigerator for an hour, it was churned into gelato.

As soon as I got the ice cream maker home, I started thinking about what kind of cookies to use for ice cream sandwiches. I considered going with a big, thin chocolate chip cookie or maybe a chewy molasses number. I’ll get to those options in time, but for my first ever homemade ice cream sandwiches, I finally decided on the chocolate malt cookies from Martha Stewart's Cookies. They are intended as a sandwich cookie in the book, I just replaced the chocolate malt filling with vanilla gelato. The cookies themselves are made with cocoa powder, malted milk powder, vanilla, and creme fraiche. They have a great texture which is a little crunchy on the edges and slightly chewy in the center, and they worked really well in ice cream sandwiches.

The interesting thing about assembling the sandwiches is that the ice cream needs to be soft enough to spread on the cookies, but you need to finish putting them together before the ice cream melts. This was tricky. I let the gelato soften in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes, and then, as I finished each sandwich, I popped it directly into the freezer. I felt a little bad that I wasn’t able to make the sandwiches more gorgeous given the speed required to finish them in my warmish kitchen. They may not have looked perfect, but they tasted incredible with the hint of salt flavor in the gelato and the rich chocolate maltedness of the cookies. Not too bad for a first try. Stay tuned for more ice cream treats to appear here in the coming days and weeks.

I'm submitting this to the ice cream social hosted by ScottySnacks, Savorthethyme, and Tangled Noodle.