I went through one of the freezers yesterday and threw out two supermarket bags of freezer burnt food and swept out a lot of rogue peas in order to make room for this tub. I've made three tubs in a week. That is a litre and a half of cream in a week and 15 eggs just on ice cream alone!
I really wanted to make something with peanut butter. I have this excellent peanut butter made by a small company in Tauranga called Small Batch. My friend gets her auntie to bring up kilos of the stuff up with her at a time. I proudly have my 1kg jar sitting on the shelf.
Growing up I loved having banana and peanut butter on toast. Like it is my favourite. When I pitched this flavour idea to some of the girls at work they were less than convinced but after having a scoop of this post gym I knew I was onto a goodun' (hey, peanut butter and bananas are legit recovery foods..)
I found a jar of salted caramel in my fridge and so last minute thought hell, why not? and folded that in at the end.
In order to prevent the bananas from browning you need to do a couple of steps starting with freezing them with their skins on. Once solid, defrost them slightly so that the skins peel off, whack them in your food processor with the juice of half a lemon and blitz to the consistency that you desire. The ascorbic acid in the lemon prevents the browning oxidation reaction when the bananas are exposed to air. Mix this reasonably quickly into your churned ice cream base and you will maintain the light yellow colour of the custard.
Banana, Peanut Butter and Salted Caramel Ice Cream
Makes 1.2L
For the base
2 cups cream (35% fat)
2 cups 1.5% fat milk
3/4 cup sugar
5 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Inclusions
2-3 small to medium sized bananas, skin on (depends on how bananary you like things)
Juice of half a lemon
1/2 cup good quality crunchy and salted peanut butter
2 generous tablespoons of salted caramel (use recipe from here)
Ice Cream Base
Place the ice cream bowl of your churner and your bananas in the freezer overnight.
To make the ice cream base (which is essentially a custard), warm your milk, cream and vanilla in a medium sized saucepan and in a separate bowl beat together the egg yolks and sugar. I do this second part in my Kitchenaid with the whisk attachment to make life easier.
Once the Milk and cream are just below a simmer remove the pan from the heat and with the beater still going on start to pour in the milk slowly into the sugar and egg one cup at time. Do this very gradually so that the eggs don't scramble. Continue to beat and pour until all the milk/cream has been added. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure all the egg and sugar is mixed in.
Transfer this mix back to the saucepan and continue to heat on a very low heat until the custard thickens slightly. It should coat the back of a spoon but it won't get thick like store bought custard. If you have a thermometer it should be about 75 to 80 degrees Celsius. DO NOT BOIL. You will scramble the eggs and this cannot be undone, you will need to start again.
Once the custard is cooked, transfer to a plastic container, cover lightly and once at room temperature place in the fridge overnight. Store your peanut butter and salted caramel in the fridge overnight as well.
To Churn
Assemble your ice cream machine. Take the container you plan to put your ice cream in in the freezer to cool. Pour in the custard base and turn on, churning for around 15 minutes so that a soft serve consistency is achieved.
While the ice cream is churning, defrost your bananas in the microwave until you can just peel the skins off. Place your bananas in a food processor (you could also just mash) along with the lemon juice and whizz until a chunky pulp is established.
Tip this along with 1/4 cup of the peanut butter into the thick soft serve. Leave to churn for another 5-10 minutes until a very solid soft serve is reached and you can see the machine is struggling to turn.
Remove the churning paddle and fold in swirls of your salted caramel (warm it slightly in the microwave if too solid) and the dollops of the remainder of the peanut butter.
Transfer into your chilled container and freeze again overnight.
Serve the next day!
Enjoy x
