Apple Pie Ice Cream

Here's a little something I made and it seems all the elements came together beautifully in one dessert.

The ice cream part is an apple pie ice cream using a vanilla custard base, if you have an ice cream maker I would highly recommend trying it, it's easy and you just forget about it!

You need to do this 12 hours in advance before the part where you use the ice cream maker.

Vanilla Ice Cream Base:

2 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 large vanilla bean, scraped

1 cup sugar

10 yolks

Follow the photo sequence of instructions here just for the vanilla base, not the banana part (unless you want to make banana ice cream! :) )

Thanks to Zoe bakes for the great ice cream making instructions.

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Now for the Apple pie part, well it really is just a pie, a whole pie baked and then chopped up in big chunks and layered with the ice cream. I made it in a form of a galette, like this except without the almonds and marzipan.

I always seem to have some pate brisee in my freezer, one batch can be divided in 4 and frozen in disks so I took some out and rolled it out, topped with apple slices that were sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, knobs of butter and then before baking I sprinkled the entire exposed crust with sugar.

I don't know if the sugar did anything specific but my goal was to caramelize the crust so that it would avoid it going mushy and soaking up any liquid while layered inside the vanilla ice cream. I think the idea worked pretty good because the crust remained amazing! I also baked it on a lower temperature for longer to really get a delicious crispy crust.

When the galette cooled I chopped it using a knife into large pieces/chunks and set them on a plate in the freezer.

Once the vanilla base ice cream mixture was put through the machine and completely churned I layered the soft ice cream in a casserole with the pieces of pie and set it back in the freezer to firm up.

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Caramelized Apple

After visiting the farmers market last week I had more apples than to know what to do with so I set out to bake some. These soft caramelized baked apple pieces were perfect to serve with the apple pie ice cream!

Chop your apples into bite sized pieces, sprinkle with sugar and dollops of butter and bake on 375 in a single layer in a casserole dish until they are tender, plump delicious, sweet and sticky with brown bits here and there.

Set aside to cool before topping your ice cream.

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Apple slice wafers

This part was a bit of an experiment. It turned out really great though! Very concenetrated apple flavour in that chips and makes a nice presentation.

Set the oven on low, 250 F is good.

Slice your apples thinly with a knife or mandolin. Press each piece front and back in a plate of sugar and then on a tray lined with parchment.

Bake and keep an eye on them, remember they do firm up once they come out so if they're a little sticky and soft just remove one and set it on another cooled piece of parchment and if it sets up you'll know it's ready. The sugar on the slice caramelizes so make sure it doesn't go the other way and just burn either.

Once they are done and cooled on another piece of parchment you can garnish your desserts or just snack on them.