Irish Brown Bread Ice Cream Recipe 2 Ways! ☘️🍦

Bold Bakers today we are making a recipe you have probably never heard of but I have coming from Ireland and it is brown bread ice cream. Now this recipe has been around for a long time since the 18th century. It is a delicious, rich, creamy ice cream that has caramelized brown bread bits with honey and sugar. It is absolutely delicious. You may never have heard of it before but you're gonna learn all about it right now. I'm gonna show you how to make it two different ways. The traditional way making a custard and my really simple, famous, no machine way using two ingredients and you do not need an ice cream machine to do it. So let's start out with our custard way, we're gonna make that custard now. So on a heavy bottom saucepan, I'm gonna turn it on to a medium low heat and then I'm going to add in some lovely cream. When making a custard like this and it only has a few ingredients, use good quality, use the best cream you can get. Something with high fat because fat means flavor. Then we have a little bit of milk and again I like to use whole milk because of the extra fat. Now into this, this is something I started doing recently as a baker, putting the salt into liquids early. You know you'll often see a recipe where it says, you know once your custard is done, stir in the salt. But I have to say, I think the flavor is vastly improved when you add the salt in early at the beginning of the cooking process. So a little bit of salt in there. Now this is slowly going to come to a simmer. You give a little stir, we don't want to scorch it. While that's doing its thing, I'm going to mix my egg yolks and my sugar, just like that. When you add egg yolks and sugar together, you always want to whisk them straight away. If you leave sugar sitting on egg yolks, it actually can create this heat and the egg yolks will cook and they'll end up being lumpy. So give it a good whisk altogether so it's combined and then that won't happen. So our milk and cream has come to a very gentle simmer and there's a rule in the kitchen, the only thing that should ever be boiling is water. We do not want custards, milk, creams ever to boil. We want them to have a gentle controlled simmer. So as you can see, it's about to simmer, it's kind of has formed a skin, which is what we want. So right now, here's what we're going to do. We are going to temper our eggs by adding a little bit of the hot liquid into our eggs. Give that a whisk. Now we are tempering because you cannot just add your yolks straight into that pan of hot. When introducing two different ingredients that are of different temperature and texture, they have to be introduced like this. Slowly add kind of the looser one into the firmer one, bringing up the temperature of the eggs, slowly, not shocking them all at once, getting them really hot. Now look at that, same texture, both liquids, both now warm. Pop your eggs into that pot. Okay, so back in the pot on a medium low heat. Remember this is a custard, it has eggs in it. What we're going to do is slowly, we're going to be very patient, we're going to wait while the eggs thicken and the custard thickens. When doing this, you want to stand here, stir it, keep moving around the pot, don't walk away because that's when your eggs can curdle, get too hot, so you're going to keep it moving. Gentle heat and slowly, you know, could take four or five minutes, slowly you'll start to see it thicken. You will notice this thickens quite a lot this ice cream base. I adore this recipe, it's very creamy, it's very rich, and especially when you use really good quality eggs that are kind of jammy, it ends up in this lovely yellow color and just like eggy, custardy, in the most lovely way. So there you go, my patience paid off after a few minutes, I'd say four to five minutes, you do get this lovely thick luscious custard. It is not bubbling, it is not trying to simmer, it is on a low heat and it is absolutely perfect. Now if, and this can happen to anybody, if your custard curdles while you're making it, do not freak out. If you have an immersion blender, or what they call a stick blender, stick that puppy in there, zoom, zoom it and it'll come back together perfectly. And then just don't curdle it again. But I'm delighted with this, look how thick it is. And you do want to get this lovely and thick because it will give you a thicker custard that will churn faster and a nicer ice cream. Mine's done here, I'm going to turn off the flame, and I'm going to bring it over to my countertop where we're going to strain it. So like any custard, you always want to strain it because it gives you a lovely silky smooth result at the end. So pass your custard through a fine sieve, just like that. Mine didn't have any lumps in the bottom, but even in the sieve, you can see little pieces of cooked egg. We want it to be as silky as anything. So this is the point where we add in a little bit of flavor. Now often you can add in some vanilla and that's totally fine, it will add a nice flavor. What I'm going to do because it's an Irish ice cream is add in my family's whiskey, Aldrisco's whiskey from the southeast of Ireland where I'm from. I absolutely adore this whiskey, it has vanilla tones. It is triple distilled and aged in bourbon casks for a minimum of three years. So it really has this lovely smooth flavor. I absolutely love it. You can go to Aldrisco's.com, find out more information about my family's whiskey. The good thing about doing vanilla or whiskey is that an alcohol will lower the freezing point of your ice cream. So it not only adds a lovely flavor, but it actually will make your ice cream more scoopable and stop it from freezing so hard. Vanilla extract has an alcohol base, so either of those will work really well. If I were you, I'd go for the whiskey. Lovely, oh gosh I can smell it. Creamy whiskey, oh delicious. Okay lovely. Now we want our custard base to cool down quite quickly because it has eggs and we don't want it to continue cooking. So you can stand there and you can stir it and let it cool down at room temperature. What I like to do is put it over a bowl of iced water to really stop the eggs cooking as fast as possible and cool it down. Because once this is cooled, we need to get it into the fridge for a minimum of four hours. But what I like to do is actually make my ice cream bases one to two days in advance. When you think about how we age cookie dough, how we age bread, we ferment it, the exact same process and the benefits apply to ice cream bases as they chill in the fridge over time, liquid evaporates so the flavor gets more concentrated. You just develop this deeper flavor of all the ingredients you added into it. So I strongly recommend being a few days ahead of yourself, making your ice cream base and then a few days later turning it. Okay so around half an hour or so, your custard base will have cooled down and it also will thicken a lot. I'm gonna give it a little taste. Oh my gosh. The flavor that I use, quality cream and eggs, you can really taste it. Also when you add in a little bit of whiskey, it's only a small amount so you don't end up with a boozy ice cream. You just end up with an ice cream, like I said, it has these kind of like vanilla, almost spicy notes so it's really delicious. Now it's time to get this into the fridge to chill down really nice and cools until we can churn it. You can't churn an ice cream base until it is very cold. Now the star of the show, the humble loaf of Irish soda bread. I've made many of these in my lifetime. This is my mom's recipe which is on BiggerBolderBaking.com. It's always a huge hit around this time of year for St. Patrick's Day. It is really easy to make. I do recommend after this video go to watch that one because I actually did the whole thing a scale ago which is the Irish language from start to finish so you might get a good laugh out of that. Also I show you how to bless the bread and release the fairies. There is a lot of tradition and nostalgia around this bread that you're definitely going to want to check out. So you need around 100g, 3.5oz which ends up being kind of like one thick slice of bread. So now what we're going to do with our bread, and this can be fresh or stale bread, it's totally fine. This recipe was invented to actually use up stale bread so back then in the 1800s you had to be really resourceful and smart about how you used food because there wasn't a lot of supply that people were very poor. It's kind of where bread and butter pudding came from and all these peasant dishes that we have and where Irish sojour bread came from. So all you want to do is just crumble it up in your hands and just get the crumbs pretty fine until they're no bigger than a corn kernel. You do want them kind of small. So you might be thinking to yourself there's nothing sweet about brown bread and I can't imagine it in a dessert but just wait and see what we're going to add to it to really elevate the flavors. Something truly special happens. So our crumbs are looking good. Into this we're going to add in a little bit of salt for flavor. It's always lovely when you have a scoop of ice cream and you bite into a little granule of salt. A little bit of cinnamon for warmth and it just kind of gives them an extra toasty kind of flavor. We have some granulated sugar here to caramelize the crumbs in the oven and some melted butter. And then just mix all that yumminess together. Now put it onto your baking tray. I tend not to line the baking tray when I'm doing granola or a recipe like this where it has to caramelize. I just put it on a clean baking tray like so. And then into the oven. Bake your brown bread crumbs at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for around 15 minutes. What you'll want to do is go in every few minutes, give them a stir around so they don't get too brown in some spot and you want them to be nice and even at the end. So look at that. When they come out of the oven they're going to be a lovely golden brown all over. Really toasty, smell like caramel nuggets and this is what they're going to taste like in the ice cream. We're going to let them cool down there for a few minutes. They are ready to go into our ice cream. So time to turn my custard. My base is really cold and lovely and thick. I have my drum which has been frozen for 24 hours. This is always the problem. Don't forget to freeze your drum the day before because it needs 24 hours in the freezer. Just an FYI, I have a Quiznart machine. I love it. I love all Quiznarts small appliances like this. So if you're looking for one, it's not that expensive and it's really good. So here we go. Now it's going to, here we go. I'm going to put it on ice cream. Let the machine run. Just follow the instruction of your ice cream machine because everyone is different. Okay, so we're going to let that turn. Like I said, every machine is different. My machine will take around, you know, less than 15 minutes. I will tell you the colder your drum and the colder your ice cream base, the faster it turns and the faster it turns, the better it is for an ice cream because it makes it creamier and you're less likely to form those ice crystals. You want to do this process kind of fast. So this is looking good. I have my crumbs here. These will go in at the very end and I have my ice cream tub that I'm going to put it in, in the freezer also to get everything ready. No matter what machine you're using, the look that you're going for is the texture of soft serve ice cream. When I see that I add in my crummies, then I get it out of the machine. So when it's like this, like soft serve ice cream and you go in with your crummies. That's it. Lovely. On with the lid. And then into the freezer. So now we made our traditional ice cream on a machine by churning it. I know not everybody has an ice cream machine. So I'm going to share with you again, you've probably already seen my viral video for two ingredient ice cream that I came up with 10 plus years ago. It has tens of millions of views. I have done around 40 flavors of ice creams over the year. They are tried and true and absolutely delicious. You mix it on a kitchen mixer and the base of the ice cream is two ingredients. So it's really so easy. You start with some heavy whipping cream, something around 36% fat content, maybe even 40 if you can find it. Something that whips up nice and well. Put it on your machine and you whip it up to soft peaks. This step takes around two to three minutes on a medium high speed. If you've never seen this ice cream before you are in for a treat. And after this video, I recommend getting comfy and watching all of my flavors of no machine ice cream. There are so many crazy ones. So now we have it on soft peaks. It's time to add in our condensed milk. The condensed milk is liquid sugar and it helps make the ice cream scoopable and you're also able to make it without the addition of egg. So if you are egg free, this is a really great recipe. And if you don't have condensed milk in your country, you can check out my recipe for homemade condensed milk. It is so easy. It's just milk and sugar. And now you just want to whip this up until it reaches stiff peaks. Another minute or two. It's looking pretty good right now. So this ice cream is a blank canvas to add anything you want into it. And that's why it was so popular for us at Bigger Bolder Baking like 11 years ago now. You really can make any flavor you want. Not only is it two ingredients for your base, super versatile, but it is incredibly fast and no churning. And you get away without churning because we whipped up all the ingredients. Churning is the process that incorporates air into things. We incorporated air into this by whipping it up so you're kind of cheating a little bit. We're getting really good results. Now, into this we're going to add in our crummy crumbs like so. I'm going to save a little bit for the top. And we're just going to fold those in. Now, same deal here. You can add in vanilla extract if you want or you can add in a splash of O'Driscoll's Irish Whiskey. And like I said, it will lower the freezing point and make your ice cream more spoopable and add lovely flavor. Here I have some disposable tubs that I love to use. And just pile it on in there. It's ready to freeze. I like to pile it nice and high to make it look really special and then I add some more crumbs on top for texture. So there's no more messing around with this. It's that simple. All you have to do now is push it into your freezer for a minimum of four hours and then it's ready to scoop. Once your ice creams have been in the freezer for a few hours, they'll be nice and firm and ready to scoop. Ice cream is best served if it sits out for a few minutes and gets nice and soft. The flavor and texture is so much better. So what makes this ice cream really unique are those lovely brown bread caramel nuggets on the inside. They are crunchy, they're lightly spiced, they have brown sugar vibes. They are absolutely delicious. The combination of the rich custard-based ice cream and then the crunchy caramel nuggets really is something special. Sometimes to be a little bit extra, I like to pour a little bit of whiskey caramel sauce on top. What's not to love about a no-machine ice cream? It is easy to make, it takes a few ingredients, it's incredibly fast and no fuss. It's fluffy, it's creamy and has a lovely smooth texture. And of course when you add those lovely brown bread nuggets in there, it is taken to the next level. Whichever one of my brown bread ice creams you decide to make, you will not be disappointed. They're delicious, they're easy and the flavor is so unique. People are going to love these ice creams. This ice cream is so special to me. It reminds me of the one that my mom used to make for dinner parties when I was growing up in Ireland. These ice creams are just a little taste of my culture that I get to share with you so I really hope you enjoyed this episode and happy St. Patrick's Day, lá féile pádrég.