As they'd never tried pumpkin as a dessert ingredient before, I opted to forgo the pumpkin pie (honestly, I think it's an acquired taste) and did my pumpkin angel food cake with salted cinnamon caramel instead. But, this left me with half a can of leftover pumpkin puree, and, like I said, I'm not much of a pumpkin enthusiast.
The story could have ended with the leftover puree in the green bin, but I feel guilty every time I throw ingredients away! So, I was determined to find some use for the pumpkin, and preferably something easy that I could do while Audrey was napping.
After perusing several recipes, I settled on making a batch of spice infused pumpkin ice cream. And, what better use for ice cream than putting it into sandwich form?
I adapted a Cooking Light recipe for my purposes. You can choose to use low and non-fat dairy products here, or you can do what I did and fatten the thing up. Or go half and half and use what you've got on hand.
Whatever you choose, it's going to be totally delicious.
Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream
Adapted from Cooking Light
Ingredients
1½ cups milk, divided
2 tbsp dark brown sugar
2 large egg yolks
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch salt
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 tbsp bourbon
1 cup sour cream
Directions
1. Combine 1 cup of the milk with the brown sugar in a saucepan and heat until 180º, or until tiny bubbles form around the edges. Do NOT bring to a boil. Remove from heat.
2. Place egg yolks in a bowl and whisk lightly. Slowly add hot milk mixture to egg yolks, whisking constantly. Return mixture to pan and cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat until mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove your newly made custard from heat and strain through a fine mesh sieve into a medium bowl. Discard any solids left behind in the sieve.
3. In a medium bowl, mix together the remaining ½ cup of milk, the sweetened condensed milk, the vanilla, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and salt. Stir in pumpkin and then gradually whisk in the custard. Cover and chill for at least 8 hours to allow the flavours to come together.
4. Combine ½ cup of the pumpkin custard mixture with the sour cream. Add back into the chilled pumpkin mixture and stir well until combined. Pour into the canister of an ice cream machine and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.
5. Once finished, spoon ice cream into a freezer safe container and freeze 1 hour or until firm.
So that's the hard part! The easy part is assembling the sandwiches. I used oatmeal cookies and sandwiched a couple tablespoons of the ice cream (which I'd softened on the counter for 30 minutes) in the middle. Soooo good! If you have soft oatmeal cookies, I think those would be the best option. I was lazy and just bought some boxed crisp oatmeal cookies.
