Damn it's hot.

I spent the last few years living in a tropical country, so I'm one of the smug few people whom are actually enjoying the coming Australian heat wave to its fullest.

I was never a huge fan of icecream but something about the tropics changed me. The first thing that I planned to do when I got back to Australia was buy an ice cream machine and go completely nuts. Not some stainless steel conspicuous consumption edition but a utilitarian white plastic number. One with a compressor built in. It would have been a foolish excess overseas if only because I could never guarantee a supply of cream to keep myself knee deep in frozen treats.

As Dave over at Paddock to Plate mentions, "there is no commercial ice cream that can come close to comparing to fresh, homemade ice cream". There really is no substitute to making your own. If you make it from scratch using cream, milk, and eggs then everything that you use will be far fresher than any commercial variety. It is one of the few foods that will tolerate complete flights of fancy when it comes to flavour. You can add nigh on anything to it.

After my scant year of experience, the key to making excellent ice cream is all about the fat content. Drop the fat content below 6% and your ice cream tastes watery and commercial. Raise the fat content too far above 12% and the ice cream begins to taste like biting into a stick of frozen butter. Neither outcome is good. Chef Michael Laiskonis has a much more accurate take on this over at his blog. Starting with 1000 grams of milk, he does the maths:

"Ideally, the fat content of an ice cream should lie between 7 and 12% of the entire yield (in this case, 1780g). Mine comes in right at low end of the range. How do I know? Well, given that whole milk contains just under 4% fat, and heavy cream 36%, I know that the butyric fat (fat from milk products) is right around 94g or 5.3% of the total. Then, knowing that fat makes up one-third of an egg yolk, I can add another 66g or so, or another 3.7% to reach the 9% total fat goal."

I'm rarely this exacting, and I'm sure that my favorite recipe thus far breaks some of Laiskonis' rules.

Palm Sugar, Malt and Walnut Ice cream

Ingredients:

150gm palm sugar
250ml milk
Pinch of salt

6 egg yolks

500ml cream 
100gm malt powder
50gms chopped walnuts

Method:

Grate up the palm sugar and warm in a saucepan with the milk and salt. 

Whisk together the malt powder and cream in a large bowl.

In a different bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Once the palm sugar has dissolved in the milk, slowly pour the sugary milk into the yolks, whisking constantly. Pour this mix back into the saucepan and return to a medium heat, stirring constantly until the mix forms into thin custard. You'll know when it is done when it coats the back of your spoon.

Pour the custard into the cream and malt mix. Whisk and set in an ice bath to cool.

Once chilled, pour the mix into your ice cream maker. Add the walnuts just before it is finished.