turmeric and ginger honeycomb ice cream

I traveled to LA last weekend to attend the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) awards. I made it a point to visit as many important restaurants as I could, we even visited Lisa Vanderpump’s Pump restaurant in West Hollywood and saw her and Ken. We were too afraid to speak to her and chickened out, so nope we didn’t speak with her or get photos with her. The IACP conference was a blast, I got to spend some time and meet some of favorite people in the world of food who have always inspired me. Now for the awards, I won the Best Photo Based Culinary Blog for this year and I couldn’t be more thankful to you (click the link to see all the winners). You guys have given me so much support and love over the years and I wish you were all there with me to celebrate!

But since you couldn’t be there physically, we can all celebrate with ice cream. As a kid whenever I got a cold, my dad would recommend drinking a glass of hot milk with turmeric sweetened with honey or sugar. But I’ve been toying with this idea for a while, why not put all of this into an ice cream and add some ginger? Sure, this ice cream is a culmination of a lot of home cold remedies in a way….. Okay, I have no scientific evidence that this will actually fight colds but it’s really good! The bright yellow color of turmeric, the fresh ginger juice and the honey makes this one delicious ice cream. You can add a few bits of crystallized ginger and I did consider doing that but 1 1/2 tablespoons of juice squeezed out of a fresh piece of ginger root is intense, so I’d personally recommend cutting back on the amount of juice if you want to incorporate ginger bits. Also, don’t add fresh ginger juice to milk and boil it, it will curdle! 

My recipe is loosely based on Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream’s cream cheese technique which makes this an egg-free version. 

Here are some of my kitchen tips that you might find useful when preparing this ice cream;

• Use a young and fresh ginger root, the flavor is better. I add the ginger juice to the ice cream base once it is chilled or the milk can curdle when hot. You can cut back on the amount of ginger used if you like it less intense
• You could garnish this with bits of crystallized ginger root but I felt that it would be too gingery because the fresh ginger flavor is pretty strong.

turmeric and ginger honeycomb ice cream

yields: about 1 pint

ingredients

2 cups whole milk

2 cups half and half

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt

1/2 cup fine grain sugar

1/4 cup diced honeycomb

2 tablespoons honey

1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch powder

2 tablespoons water

3 ounces creamcheese

1 1/2 tablespoons peeled and freshly grated ginger root

1. Place the milk, half and half, turmeric powder, salt, sugar, honeycomb and honey in a thick-bottomed medium sized saucepan. Stir on medium-high heat with constant stirring until all the milk starts to boil. When the milk starts to boil vigorously, whisk the cornstarch and water in a small bowl and whisk into the saucepan. Allow the ice cream base to thicken by boiling for about 4 minutes with constant stirring. The mixture should resemble a custard and coat the back of a spoon. Pass the hot mixture through a sieve, then whisk the mixture into a large bowl containing the creamcheese. Store the ice cream in a gallon ziploc bag, place the bag in an ice water bath until it is completely chilled. 

2. Squeeze and collect the juice from the freshly grated ginger root. Stir this juice into the chilled ice cream base. Pour the liquid into your ice cream maker and churn as per the manufacturer’s instructions. Store in a freezer safe container and allow to freeze for at least 4 hours until firm.