Recipe: Coconut Macaroon Ice Cream

My friend Kristina is a big ice cream eater. She's forever telling me about some great new flavour she tried, either from the grocery store or at a mall kiosk, and her descriptions never fail to make me salivate.

Unfortunately, Kristina is an American, so she's dining off of an entirely different ice cream spectrum than the one I have access to. My Canadian grocery store has tons of great stuff, yeah--shout out to President's Choice for their tasty and affordable Ice Cream Shoppe range--but it's not the same great stuff.

Thank goodness my ice cream maker frees me from the need to eat solely what I can find in the freezer aisle.

Last summer, Kristina told me about a delectable coconut macaroon ice cream. My grocery store failed to yield anything similar, but within a week I'd developed a recipe and made a batch my own self.

And y'all, it was delicious. You have to try it.

A word of warning: homemade ice cream gets quite a bit harder than the store bought variety as a general rule, and this particular ice cream freezes like nobody's business. (Coconut milk gets solid when you stick it in the freezer. Who knew?) It needs quite a bit of time on the counter before it's ready to scoop.

On the plus side, its solidity makes it the perfect choice for an ice cream cake or other moulded dessert. I'm gonna try that next time I produce a batch.

Ingredients:

• four or five coconut macaroons, coarsely chopped
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1.75 cups whole milk
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1 tin coconut milk (in the 375ml range; size varies by brand)

Before you do anything else, ensure your ice cream maker is properly prepared according to the manufacturer's directions.

The custard itself is fairly basic. Combine the sugar, salt, and milk in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Cook the mixture until it begins to steam, then remove it from the heat and slowly whisk about half of it into the beaten eggs. Return the egg mixture to the main pot, whisking all the while, and replace the pot on the burner. Reduce heat to low and continue to cook the custard until it's slightly thick.

Remove it from the heat, pour it into a large measuring cup with a spout, and let it chill in the fridge for at least four hours.

This is a good time to make your macaroons if you haven't done that yet (and if you're using the homemade variety, which I highly recommend), or to chop them up if you've already got some on hand.

Once the custard is nice and cold, whisk in the coconut milk. This might take a little while if the stuff solidified in the tin, but just keep on whisking. It'll happen.

Pour the custard-coconut milk mixture into your ice cream maker and let it do its job for 20-40 minutes. When the ice cream shows signs of being just this side of done, add the chopped macaroons and leave it for another minute or two so everything becomes nicely incorporated.

Pour the mostly-frozen ice cream into a tub and stick it in your freezer to harden overnight. Let it soften on the counter for around twenty minutes before you scoop it.