Guinness week: the ice cream

Ahh, saving the best for last, Guinness-week-wise.

As a cook I have a couple of secret weapons. One: the willingness to fail. Two: certain cookbooks that I rely on heavily for recipes that turn out right the first time, making me less likely to need to call on One.

One of those books that I rely on: The Perfect Scoop.

Now, don't get married JUST for the ice cream maker, but that's how I got mine, and boy does it ever get a workout. Ice cream, like the willingness to fail and the foolproof cookbooks, is a great secret. It can be done way ahead of time and people are nearly always impressed by it: "You MADE ice cream?"

Shh, don't tell them how easy it is.

Now, I'm going to contradict myself a little here. One of the things that's so great about The Perfect Scoop is that it has a lot of delicious ice cream recipes that don't require making a custard. Making a custard is, yes, fairly exacting, and there are more ways to screw it up than to get it right. So I generally avoid making custard-based ice creams unless I have to.

Needless to say, for Guinness-Milk Chocolate Ice Cream, I had to.

(I'll do a longer post sometime on the joy of custard-making, but that can wait for another day; here's the short version: use the instructions in the front of A Perfect Scoop; and also a Thermapen)

This ice cream is... weird. The Guinness provides a dark, nutty-bitter-almost-earthy note that only hits you after the upfront WHAM of the milk chocolate is gone. I couldn't decide whether I liked it or whether it was just too earthy to enjoy.

But I did notice that at least one of our guests had thirds.

Comments

[Russ Carr]

I challenge you to do Guinness Week again next year, with entirely different recipes.

[Jael McHenry]

I'll take that challenge! There were a lot of braising recipes I had to pass up for the pork... mmmm, Guinness-braised short ribs. And Nigella's chocolate stout cake. Not sure about the ice cream, but I could always do the Guinness float or Guinness shake if needed.

Or possibly, I could try a different beer.

[Louise Arnold]

Don't attempt Nigella's Guinness Cake. Or do, but be prepared for something that oozes more grease than teenage skin, and tastes like burnt popcorn. Or do, and don't mess it up like I did.

One of these three is the correct choice.

[jael]

Ooh, I will definitely look before I leap with Nigella's Guinness cake, Louise. If I want something that tastes like burnt popcorn there's obviously a much more direct route, which is to burn popcorn and have done with it.