Prefer To Use Whole Beans,

Everyone loves coffee ice cream, but no one can agree on what it should taste like. Do you like it sweet and creamy, with just a hint of coffee, Or do you take it bold and bracing with just a dash of milk and sugar, Point is, there are countless ways to make coffee ice cream, which is a hazard for recipe developers, because everyone has their own idea of what coffee ice cream should taste like. So what's an ice cream maker to do, Easy: Make them all. After years tinkering with various recipes, coffee roasts, grind settings, and flavor pairings, I've settled on recipes that run the coffee spectrum from mild to insanely dark and bitter.

The goal of doing so isn't to lock you into one camp of ice cream, but to show you how to make any kind of coffee ice cream your heart desires. To wit, here are the general principles to know. The beans: Use good coffee. Dirt-cheap macro-roasted coffee will make cheap-tasting ice cream, while freshly roasted and ground quality beans will bring depth and character to your base. That freshness does matter; stale-tasting beans make for stale-tasting ice cream. That said, don't worry about getting the best, most expensive, most painstakingly harvested and roasted beans, as the subtle nuances of your favorite coffee will probably get lost in all the sugar and cream.

I prefer darker roasts for ice cream purposes, though note the darker your roast, the more bitterness you'll bring to the ice cream. The grind: A plain medium grind will deliver plenty of coffee flavor while still being large enough for easy filtering later. If you prefer bits of grounds in your coffee, strain your base with a coarser-mesh filter. Prefer to use whole beans, You can, but you'll need to use a lot more of them to achieve the same flavor, and you'll have to steep them into milk and cream separately, a step my approach doesn't require. The brew: Many coffee ice creams call for steeping grounds in hot cream and milk, then tempering the hot liquid into egg yolks and sugar.

It's a lot of trouble and easily makes a mess, and there's no need to do it. Coffee infuses its flavor quickly into dairy, and in my testing, that flavor doesn't improve with longer steeping. Instead, whisk your grinds directly into your egg yolks and sugar, add milk and cream cold, and cook the base all in one pot. By the time you bring your base to the ideal custard temperature, 170°F, your beans will have given up everything they have to offer. Once you have those basics out of the way, it's easy to customize your recipe to get exactly the flavor and texture you want.