Maison du Miel’s Heather Honey Ice Cream Recipe
This honey ice cream recipe makes a creamy bowl of goodness that tastes as good as it looks. Four ingredients; plump vanilla beans, heavy cream, whole milk, and honey. That's it.
This honey ice cream tastes as good as it looks. Four ingredients; plump vanilla beans, heavy cream, whole milk, and honey. That's it.
I am always looking for excuses to try recipes from Patricia Well's cookbooks. I've cooked many recipes from them over the years -- always pleased by their reliability, simplicity of ingredients, and overall deliciousness. She also hosts many cooking classes in France which have been tempting me from afar (start saving your pennies!).
I'm going to take this Honey Ice Cream to our friends tonight (with some crisp ginger cookies) packed in ice so that it doesn't melt on its journey across the Bay Bridge towards Berkeley. Hopefully it will taste as good a few hours from now as it did straight out of the ice cream maker.
Patricia uses a deep, rust-toned Heather Honey from La Maison du Miel for this recipe. I had a hard time finding any Heather honey yesterday, but actually had a nice, amber desert mesquite honey in the cupboard (I might actually opt for a bit lighter honey next time around). The recipe couldn't be simpler. Heat all your ingredients and let them steep for an hour. Chill the mixture, and then pour it into your ice cream maker and let it run until your ice cream is the consistency of the above picture. I use a little Krups ice cream maker and absolutely love it.
This ice cream is rich and sweet -- just how rich or how sweet will depend in part on the type of honey you end up using. This isn't the sort of ice-cream you are going to turn into a double-scoop cone. A tiny scoop or two with a crispy cookie is a nice way to end a meal.
You can make this ice cream. It is one of the simplest ice cream/gelato recipes I've ever come across. No eggs, no cornstarch, no thickening custards....A great recipe to try if you want an easy way to break in that new ice cream maker you got over the holidays.
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Maison du Miel's Heather Honey Ice Cream Recipe
2 plump, moist vanilla beans
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup heather honey (or substitute another aromatic honey such as chestnut or eucalyptus)
Flatten the vanilla beans and cut them in half lengthwise. With a small spoon, scrape out the seeds. Place the seeds and pods in a large saucepan. Add the cream, milk, and honey. Stir to dissolve the honey. Heat over moderate heat, stirring from time to time, just until tiny bubbles form around the edges of the pan, 3 to 4 minutes.
Remove from the heat and let steep, covered, for 1 hour.
Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled (hs note: v. important)
Remove the vanilla pods, and stir the mixture again to blend. transfer it to an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.
From The Paris Cookbook by Patricia Wells (Harper Collins, 2001) - reprinted with permission
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Hey, speaking of powdered milk, I bought some today but was a bit confiused by the different types- "instant" and "non-instant." Anybody know the difference between the two?
Heidi, I just learned the importance of powdered milk in homemade ice creams -- hence the inclusion of it in Pierre Herme's recipe. In Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking," which I just got from the library, there is a bit about how home freezing tends to make coarser-textured ice creams. He offers a few suggestions and (scientific explanation) for making a softer, lighter textured ice cream, including the addition of powdered milk! There is of course, a limit to how much you can put in before it works against you, though. It's fascinating nonetheless, especially since I've seen A LOT of ice cream recipes and the Herme one was the only recipe to mention powdered milk. The chocolate ice cream I made earlier following the Herme recipe, but without the powdered milk, was indeed dense, but in a rich, fudgey kind of way.
ice cream is one of life's greatest pleasures, and it's easy to make too, as your recipe proves. i use the krups also, 5 happy years and counting.
Wow, that looks so amazing. I checked out your new stock section--you take INCREDIBLE photos! Are you a professional or something? :)
Heidi, how did you know that we got an ice-cream maker for the holidays? So far we've made a simple, creamy vanilla bean and just this weekend I did a mocha, requested by my brother for his birthday. Had to invent the recipe, since I couldn't find one I liked. It looks like honey may be next on my list -- I have this delightful "1000 Flowers" honey from Spain that might be just the thing...
Hello Heidi, the Pierre Herme recipe calls for 1/3 cup of powdered milk. the book seems to have good adaptations (for the home cook) of his signature recipes. he's got a note in there about how important it is that chocolate ice cream be made with chocolate, not cocoa, and without eggs, too -- he says eggs obscure the taste of the chocolate. it's nice for people like me who don't like really eggy ice creams! how nice would the recipe be with a flavored chocolate like the vosges ones...
Also, Mariko....I've read a couple other accounts of the Krups blue leakage issue. So far I'm in the clear with mine...I sort of baby it, let it defrost completely on the counter, and then clean it out after it defrosts. Then I put it back in the freezer where it lives. Hopefully it will hold up, as it makes delicious and beautifully textured ice cream and sorbet for me. -h
Hi Fiel... I've had my eye on that book for some time now...I may have to pick it up :) How much powdered milk did that recipe call for? -h
honey ice cream sounds so good! i'm excited about simple ice creams right now, i'm compelled to share -- i tried out an amazing and simple ice cream recipe for chocolate ice cream last night out of "Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme" -- just milk, dark chocolate and sugar. well, the recipe calls for powdered milk, which i didn't have, so i made it without, but i really can't imagine it tasting any better with it. i made the variation with lavender, and it's really good.
Holy mackerel, that is the most gorgeous photo of ice cream I have ever seen! My Krups maker never cranked out anything that looked like that! (Speaking of my Krups maker, it began oozing blue stuff, and I had to put it on a shelf in the garage.)
looking gorgeous as usual!
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