Pimp My Easter Basket: Malted Milk Ice Cream with Robin Eggs

Tags

candy, chocolate, desserts, Easter, ice cream, malted milk, Pimp My Easter Basket, Robin Eggs, Whoppers

Being a part of Pimp My Easter Basket, I’ve come to a realization: I am not really a fan of most Easter candy.  The majority (like Cadbury Eggs and Peeps) are overly sweet, yet somehow I manage to eat them anyway if they’re around.

Robin Eggs are no exception, though they’re definitely higher up than Peeps (everything is higher than Peeps…).

Last summer, I purchased The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz and have made a couple recipes from it, but oddly enough, neither were for actual ice cream.  Never did I imagine that the first ice cream I’d make would be Malted Milk Ice Cream.  It’s not that I have anything against malt, it was just an unknown flavor to me outside of Whoppers. 

Thanks to PMEB, I thought I would give this ice cream a try because it seemed like it would be perfect for mixing in some Robin Eggs.  Have mercy!!  This stuff is the creamiest, richest ice cream I’ve ever had.  Maybe it’s the combination of half and half, heavy cream, and malted milk, but whatever it is, it’ll knock your socks off the chain (umm…what?).  The Amateur Gourmet was even inspired to write a very Ben Folds-esque song about it.

And you know, the Robin Eggs totally work of course since they’re just in place of their non-candy-coated counterparts.  As a bonus, they add some funky pastel touches and a crisp candy crunch.  I suspect anything would be made delicious if submerged in this sublime stuff, even Peeps.

Malted Milk Ice Cream with Robin Eggs
adapted (barely) from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

As mindblowing as this is, it was a cinch to make.  The trickiest part is chopping the Robin Eggs, but I would have used my food processor had I thought ahead.  Needless to say, the floor got several little treats.

1 cup half and half
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup malt powder
6 large egg yolks
2 cups Robin Eggs (candy-coated malted milk balls), coarsely chopped (I used a 10 ounce bag of the mini variety)

1. Mix and heat the half and half, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan over medium low heat.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the heavy cream, vanilla, and malt powder.  Set over an ice water bath, and place a mesh strainer on top of the bowl of cream.

3. In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks.  Whisk in some of the warm half and half mixture to warm up the yolks.  Pour the yolks in a thin stream into the saucepan, whisking constantly.  Raise the heat to medium and continue cooking and stirring until custard thickens.  It should coat the back of a spoon.  Remove from heat.

4. Pour the warm custard through the mesh strainer into the cream.  Stir the mixture over the ice water bath until cooled.  Cover with plastic wrap against the surface of the ice cream base and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled (I let it sit overnight).

5. Freeze ice cream according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.  Stir in the chopped Robin Eggs when scooping the ice cream into its storage container.

Now, that is all very ridiculously delicious, but with Pimp My Easter Basket in mind, I tried to take this one step further.

The idea was to make chocolate covered malted ice cream balls.  I was originally going to use the tartuffi recipe (also from The Perfect Scoop) that I used to make Banana Balls, but 1) wanted to use milk chocolate and worried about the golden (or corn) syrup making it too sweet, and 2) have been really curious about a recipe I’d recently seen for an all-natural chocolate shell topping using coconut oil.

Key word from above: tried.  I kept having melting issues because it’s just too hot here right now!  My coconut oil is even liquid at room temperature, which is in the 80s despite the blasting A/C.  That said, the chocolate sauce was fine, not to mention way easy to make.

So back to the ice cream that you need to make.  David Lebovitz is the Dairy King, and I am so not worthy.  You should totally check out his book.  In addition to the awesome recipes, it’s replete with great, humorous stories!

And a final reminder: It’s the last day to send your posts to PimpMyEasterBasket@gmail.com if you want them included in Saturday’s pimptastic roundup!  Still a few hours to spare, kids…