Rosewater, Pistachio, & Sweet Cream Ice Cream

Nothing says summer quite like ice cream. And this is the first summer where I’ve had my very own ice cream maker! None of these delicious dairy treats would be possible without the help of my wonderful friend, Matt Lanter, who so sweetly gifted me one! We briefly chatted about how there were so many attachments to have and how excited I was to start expanding my collection. Lo and behold, an Amazon box arrives on our doorstep and my very first Kitchenaid attachment is inside! I was beyond excited to try out my ice cream maker and immediately started researching what flavors I wanted to make and what methods I wanted to try.

This is a chain of three ice cream posts! The first, Rosewater, Pistachio, & Sweet Cream Ice Cream, is a light and refreshing combination. The second ice cream, sour cherry and dark chocolate, is a twist on childhood favorite. The last ice cream, goat cheese, rosemary, & blueberry, is pleasantly surprising! So stay for one, or stay for all of the ice creams. Each recipe is listed separately. Got your lactate pills? All right! Let’s make some ice cream!

Before you get started, keep these tips and tricks in mind to ensure a better ice cream:

1. Chill your base. You want your base to be as cold as possible so the ice cream attachment or machine only has to worry about turning cold liquids into frozen solids, not lukewarm liquids into cold liquids. This will make your life so much easier.
2. Deep freeze your ice cream attachment. This isn’t your ordinary ice pack. Your ice cream cylinder needs to be frozen solid. It’s going to have to sit outside the freezer and turn a liquid into a solid so you want to give it as much time as possible in the freezer. Unless you have the equivalent of a small AC unit in your machine like those industrial ice cream machines, give your cylinder at least 24 hours in the freezer. If you have an electric ice cream maker, you can run the entire machine in the freezer to get a truly frozen ice cream. I’ve used this basic Cusinart ice cream maker in the past and it’s very easy to figure out and clean. I have the Kitchenaid Ice cream attachment for my professional size mixer, so just make sure you get the right size.
3. Keep everything cold. Something that you won’t think about to keep cold is the container you are going to store your ice cream in. You don’t want your freshly churned ice cream to melt once you put it in it’s final container. Pre-freeze your container so it’s ready for storage.
4. Cover with some extra plastic wrap. While you may store your ice cream in a tupperware or a real ice cream container, everyone can benefit from an additional layer of plastic wrap. Keep the plastic wrap tight to the ice cream and make sure some hangs over the edge for easy removal. This will prevent air from coming in contact with the ice cream and forming those dreaded ice crystals!
5. Store in a loaf pan for easy scooping. To get perfect scoop, store the ice cream in a long container like a loaf pan. This way, you can glide your ice cream scoop easily to make long scoops to form the balls of ice cream. If you heat the scoop in hot water, it will also help the scoop easily glide through. If you want a more official ice cream storage solution, you can also use a long re-usable plastic container. It also fits better in the freezer than a traditional pint container.

Rosewater, Pistachio, & Sweet Cream Ice Cream

The first ice cream is dedicated to my Persian friends, Natalie and Neda, who introduced me to rosewater ice cream in high school. I remember driving around LA and stopping in at a Persian grocery store where I probably tried all 8 flavors and didn’t like any of them. They all had an odd taste that I couldn’t place. After the grumpy shopkeeper had left, Natalie was nice enough to inform me that they were made with rosewater, which is what I didn’t like. Now I love rosewater and can’t get enough of it in middle eastern foods and desserts! It’s a traditional flavor that’s enjoying some well deserved time in the mainstream spotlight.

To get started, grind up unsalted and roasted pistachios.You can also food process them or blend them, but be careful not let them get too hot. The friction from the blades can turn the nuts into a weird gummy paste. Slightly tangentially, many people expect pistachio ice cream or gelato to be green, but as you can see from the nuts themselves, they are much more of a deep yellow with a green tinge. I had a fabulous Italian Art History professor who taught us the most important way to weed out the subpar gelato shops. Take a peek at their pistachio gelato. If it’s bright green, you know they are cheap with their ingredients because they used food coloring and flavoring instead of the pricey pistachio. Stay away from those gelaterias!

Whip the egg yolks, sugar, corn syrup and rosewater until thick and foamy while you boil the milk and cornstarch. Make sure that you don’t have lumps of cornstarch in your milk. I like to mix the cornstarch into a small quantity of the milk, and then pour that back into the rest of the milk. This way, you can press out any lumps with a spoon or easily whisk them out. Slowly add the the milk & cornstarch mixture to the eggs while the mixture is still on. Pour it in slowly, or risk turning your eggs into scrambled eggs! Let the base come to room temperature and then chill in the fridge for at least 6 hours.

One of my favorite parts of the Rosewater, Pistachio, & Sweet Cream Ice Cream is the frozen whipped cream. The ice cream itself is not super sweet, but you get chunks of the frozen sweet whipped cream in every bite. It’s also wonderfully crunchy and a nice surprise. While the base chills, whip the heavy cream and sugar until stiff peaks form. Freeze the whipped cream.

Once the base is chilled and your ice cream maker is frozen, churn to your manufactures instructions. In my Kitchenaid, it was about 20 minutes. You can over churn ice cream so be aware of that. If you can hear the attachment “click” from the ice cream’s resistance, that’s a sign to stop churning. Also, for those of you who are impatient like me, don’t turn up the speed on your mixer! This will not help the ice cream churn faster.

After you finish churning the ice cream, stir in the ground pistachios and chunks of the frozen whipped cream. Quickly pour the ice cream into your final storage vessel, cover and freeze until solid. If you cover the ice cream with plastic wrap as well as the lid to the storage container, you can minimize those dastardly ice crystals. Let the ice cream sit out at room temperature for 3-5 minutes before serving for easy scooping, but once you’ve served it, stick it back in the freezer!

Serve with more pistachios or on a chocolate dipped cone! Rosewater, Pistachio, & Sweet Cream Ice Cream might have been the most popular among my taste testers because of its lightness and unexpected flavors. So give rosewater a try, you won’t be disappointed!