Beer Ice Cream

It's basically ice cream. Except, with beer.

Okay, so for this recipe, you'll need an ice cream machine. Buy yourself a cheap one. It's worth it for this recipe alone! I've adapted this recipe from the Beerbistro cookbook.

Ingredients

1¼ cups whipping cream
5 egg yolks
½ cup granulated sugar (approximately - I used about 2.5 oz)
½ cup + 2 tbsp beer* (see note)
5 skor bars, crushed

**note** You cannot just use any old beer here. If you use a Keith's or Budweiser, you might as well just throw the whole recipe in the garbage. You need something like a stout, with a sweet, almost banana-y profile. A doppelbock would be perfect here. I used Aventinus Weizen Eisbock. In spite of that being an extra strong beer (12%), the ice cream set perfectly.

Directions

In a bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar. They should go from bright yellow to a pale yellow as you whisk them.

Before

After

See? Different colour. Now, set those aside, while you pour the cream into the saucepan and heat over medium high heat until boiling.

Whisking constantly, slowly pour the hot cream into the egg mixture. You HAVE to do this slowly. If you don't, you'll end up with scrambled eggs. 

Return the mixture to the pan and, stirring constantly, heat until it's thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.

Remove from heat and stir in beer. 

Now, according to my ice cream maker's directions, you're supposed to put the whole thing the fridge to cool before adding it to the ice cream machine.

I'm an impatient person. I dumped the whole thing in still warm and let the machine go to work.

It took about a ½ hour for the ice cream to set up to about a soft serve consistency. At this point, turn off the machine (taste for awesomeness) and dump in the skor bits.

YUM. I was so impatient, I didn't even bother to get better light for this shot!

Stir together until the chocolate is incorporated into the mixture, but do it quickly! You don't want it to melt!

Dump the whole thing in a container, and put in the freezer for 3 hours to firm up. Because of the alcohol content, this won't be as solid as a regular ice cream.

That's right, beer & skor ice cream

Eat and be amazed. Serves... well... I guess that depends. I'd say it makes enough for 6-8 small servings. This is quite rich, so you don't need tons of it.