Butterscotch, Mint Chocolate Chip, and Mocha Ice Creams

By Brooklyn Bill

The weather doesn't have to get too warm to get me in the mood for cranking out the ice cream like a goy Ben or Jerry. A few weeks ago, I made Butterscotch Ice Cream that was an improvement over my previous, not-bad-at-all attempt back in February. Then I made my all-time favorite flavor, Mint Chocolate Chip, because fresh peppermint had returned to the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket and my friend who is the most enthusiastic about my MCC was coming to visit. And on Monday, I made Mocha Ice Cream for the first time, partly in anticipation of a visit from my father this coming weekend.

I made the butterscotch kind the same way as in the recipe in the Hawleyblog post I linked to above except I used all (1 cup of) brown sugar in the egg-yolk mixture. So between that and the caramel base, this ice cream was totally brown sugar–rific.

The butter separated out again as the ice cream custard was chilling, like it did the first time, but I was again able to recombine it with vigorous stirring before I ran the custard through my ice cream makers. Maybe using David Lebovitz's technique of rapidly chilling the custard in an ice-water bath would prevent that.

My buddy Dan, shown at right, is especially fond of my MCC ice cream. He and his partner, Paul, are my Trenton-based BFFs. They visited me two weekends ago, and we had a ball in Astoria, Queens. And they ate some ice cream, both the mint and the butterscotch, back in Brooklyn. And a few days earlier, so did two friends from work, Joyce and Missy, and Missy's husband, Nate. (See that same link.)

MCC was my favorite ice cream when I was a kid, and it's so much better when it's made using fresh mint leaves and Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips. And when it's shared with dear friends.

And dear relatives: I told my Granny I would save some MCC for her to have the next time Dad brought her up to visit me. And that will happen this coming weekend.

My Dad loves my Coffee Ice Cream, and in his older age, he's started to really enjoy chocolate. I was also in the mood to tackle a new flavor, so I whipped up some Mocha Ice Cream earlier this week, using 2 heaping cups of three different kinds of coffee beans I had been storing in the freezer for just such a frozen-treat emergency and 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I think there's a good balance between the coffee and chocolate flavors, and the texture is velvety smooth. Dad and his wife, Jean, are gonna love it.