Sasha's Kitchen: Spiced Pumpkin Ice Cream

I never ate much ice cream before I lived in Brooklyn. I live very close to Brooklyn's famous Blue Marble Ice Cream, which is probably the best ice cream I have ever had. They have different flavors each day, both traditional and offbeat, as well as seasonal flavors, and even some sorbets. All of the ice cream is organic - made with local New York State dairy products. The pumpkin ice cream, their newest fall flavor, is amazing - simply put. So What on earth would possess this inspired, but busy chef to make her own pumpkin ice cream when Blue Marble is right around the corner? I guess I have that urge to create and making ice cream is fun (and simple). Plus, I wanted to see if mine could be good - although I knew it wouldn't be as good or better. But it's worth trying.

I got a new Deni ice cream maker as part of a promotion from CSN Stores, so I was eager to try it out. This first recipe is seasonal and delicious, but fairly simple. My next flavor, which will be a dessert at our house for the family Thanksgiving Dinner that Brad and I are hosting is going to be a recipe I found for gingerbread ice cream made with Trappist Ale and various spices. Yum! I was impressed with the ice cream maker - it worked well, though I did have some difficulty attaching the top, which may something that I can figure out with a bit more effort. It was certainly an improvement over my 20-year old manual Doniver ice cream maker.  This one churns automatically, which is a nice upgrade.

Sasha's Spiced Pumpkin Ice Cream

1 1/4 cups organic pumpkin puree

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups of heavy cream

5 egg yolks

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp salt

pinch of nutmeg

Combine the pumpkin and the vanilla in a bowl. In a saucepan, heat the brown sugar and 1 cup of the cream and 1/2 cup of the brown sugar over medium heat for about five minutes until it bubbles a bit on the sides. In a mixing bowl, combine the remaining heavy cream, egg yolks, spices and pumpkin mixture. Add this mix to the saucepan and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes until it forms a custard. Chill for at least 5 hours. Then prepare the ice cream following the manufacturer's instructions for your ice cream maker.

This was really good! But it wasn't as good as Blue Marble. Other than not being an ice cream professional, I think the difference is the heavy cream that I used, Farmland, which has 1 gram of sugar. I have decided to use organic Ronnybrook whole milk and organic Ronnybrook heavy cream in my next ice cream making experiment for Thanksgiving (the gingerbread ice cream with the beer) and see if I get just a little bit closer to Blue Marble perfection. It was still really good though and quite beautiful to look at with a great orange color and wonderful spiced pumpkin flavor. Check out the video of the ice cream maker doing its thing, below.