This cookbook is for when you are lying in a shady hammock, cool breezes blowing across the water, a long lazy weekend stretching out ahead of you, practical matters (like grocery shopping and meal planning) behind you—and it’s time to think about making ice cream.
With photos vibrant with colors like matcha green, robin’s egg blue, lemon yellow, and strawberry milkshake pink, Great Scoops: Recipes from a Neighborhood Ice Cream Shop very much makes you want to try your hand at creating one of life’s real pleasures.
Authors Marlene Haley and Amelia Ryan run a scoop shop in Ottawa, Canada, called The Merry Dairy. And though they take ice cream making seriously, they are convincing when they insist that it’s not hard, and then take you on a step-by-step journey to making your own.
Great Scoops is organized by season, with this Hibiscus & Passion Fruit delegated to spring, celebrating “the first warm days” after a Canada winter. In Florida, however, passion fruit means summer and it’s perfect for right now. Other flavors from the “summer” chapter that are begging to be tested soon: Southern Sweet Tea, Sweet Corn & Blueberry, and Pink Lemonade.
Hibiscus & Passion Fruit Ice Cream
Equipment
- ice cream maker
Ingredients
- 2 400 ml cans coconut milk, chilled for 24 hours
- 1 400 ml can coconut milk, at room temperature
- 1½ cups sugar 300 grams
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 2 ripe passion fruits
- 1 cup dried food-grade hibiscus flowers
Instructions
- Prepare an ice bath. (Fill a large bowl with ice and water, and place a medium bowl inside it.)
- Scoop out 1½ cups (350 g) coconut cream from the chilled cans of coconut milk and reserve coconut water for another use. Whisk together coconut cream, coconut milk, sugar, and salt in a medium-sized saucepan. Stir over medium-high heat for 5–7 minutes, until sugar is dissolved and no visible bits of coconut cream remain.
- Meanwhile, cut passion fruits in half and scoop out the pulp and seeds.
- Add to the saucepan along with the hibiscus. Reduce heat to low and steep passion fruit and hibiscus for 20 minutes.
- Remove from heat and strain through a fine-mesh sieve into the inner bowl of the prepared ice bath, pressing down on the passion fruit and hibiscus with a stiff rubber spatula to extract as much flavor as possible.
- Cool the ice cream base in the ice bath until room temperature, stirring occasionally. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, or overnight.
- Once the base is chilled, you may notice a layer of solids on the top. Give it all a quick mix to incorporate before churning. Place storage container in the freezer to chill. Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions until ice cream is thick and creamy and has increased in volume by about a third. The base is ready when (with the machine turned off) you can scoop a big spoon of it and watch the ice cream fall back into the bowl in thick trails.
- Freshly churned ice cream can be enjoyed right away or, for a firmer scoop, stored in a chilled airtight container in the freezer for a further 2 hours. For optimal flavor and texture, homemade ice cream is best consumed within 2 weeks of being made.
