Lychee Ice Cream With Praline Almonds

This has occurred to me previously too. A certain syndrome or phenomenon, whatever you might want to name it. That everything’s been running smoothly and peacefully on a steady pace. No hiccups, no hurdles. Almost reaching to a stage of complacency {read getting used to the ease of life here}. That peace and smoothness starts taking  it’s own toll. And slowly starts killing the creative being inside me.

The inner me wants to surge out like ASAP, knowing that something’s not happening right. But it takes it’s own time.  Not sure, if this could be a reason I am somehow not able to conjure up my thoughts here and hence I have been finding reasons to stay away from this space. In fact, I have been talking to a close friend about this, but all I could put forward was a bunch of lame excuses. Though, I have been spending a lot of my time in kitchen besides work, churning, whipping, baking, cooking. Every time I  cooked and shot, I fell short of thoughts, that kept me away from all you lovely folks. {I know, all this blabbering sounds so lame…ain’t it!}. Yeah, I am still trying to figure this out. OK…I can’t burden you anymore with all this non-sense silly talk.

Let’s talk about food, for the reason you and me are here. So, I ordered this wonderful and literally splendid book on frozen desserts, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home, a couple of weeks before. I went through all the recipes in the book, like I always do, as soon as I open the book for the first time. The way Jeni’s found a unique way of creating artisan american ice creams in home kitchens, is awe inspiring. And all that astonishingly yummy stuff is minus eggs.

I fell in love with her ice cream base instantaneously. And I knew, which flavor I was going to make first. This one is not from her book, rather my own imagination fired by the abundance of this in-season fragrantly sweet juicy plump Lychee fruit. And for the Jeni’s ice cream base, I used all local produce. Made me all the more happy. Mother liked this one a lot, specially knowing that this was en egg-free dessert she could relish.

Her recipe uses cream cheese and double cream, which I replaced with locally available cream cheese spread and low fat cream (Amul). And I served the ice cream with some crushed praline almonds and that doubled up the joy of the most splendid ice cream, made at home.

Recipe adapted from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home

Ingredients

1 cup whole milk
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp cornstarch
3 tbsp cream cheese, softened
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
2 1/4 cup low fat cream
2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp honey
1 cup Lychee pulp, divided

Instructions

1. Take half of the lychee pulp and puree it in a blender or food processor and let it chill in fridge.
2. Chop remaining lychee pulp and spread on a shallow glass dish and freeze.
3. Mix about 2 tbsp of milk with corn starch in a small bowl to make a slurry.
4. Whisk together cream cheese and salt in a medium bowl until smooth.
5. Combine the remaining milk, cream, sugar, honey in a sauce pan and bring to rolling boil over medium high heat and boil for 4 minutes.
6. Remove from heat and gradually whisk in the cornstarch slurry. Bring the mixture back to boil and boil over medium high heat and cook stirring about 1 minute. Remove from heat.
7. Gradually whisk in the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese until smooth. Let the mixture come to room temperature. Chill it in fridge, stirring in between.
8. Add the lychee puree to the ice cream mixture once cooled completely and chill the mixture completely until ready to make the ice cream.
9. Freeze the ice cream n the ice cream maker as per the manufacturer’s instructions. Mix in the frozen lychee bits, just before ice cream is about to be ready in the ice cream maker. Store in freezer. Top with chopped praline almonds, while serving.

Praline Almonds

Ingredients

60 ml water
100 gm sugar
135 gm whole almonds
1/8 tsp coarse salt

Instructions

1. Mix the water, sugar and almonds in a sauce pan. Put the pan on a medium high heat and cool, stirring constantly with a spoon, until sugar dissolves and liquid dissolves.
2. Lower the heat to medium and continue cooking until the liquid crystallizes and becomes sandy. Very soon the crystals of sugar at the bottom of pan will begin to liquify. Stir the dark syrup at the bottom of pan over the nuts to coat them. Continue stirring and coating the nuts until the almonds are glazed and have a bit glossy and shiny skin.  Remove from heat and sprinkle the salt and scatter in a baking tray lined with silicon mat. Let cool completely. Break up the clusters if they stick to each other, once the nuts have completely cooled.