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Roasted Chestnut Ice Cream

Roasted Chestnut Ice Cream

A rich, creamy, nutty ice cream using seasonal chestnuts that you've had the fun of roasting, or pre-roasted chestnuts that are vacuum sealed. Adding in chocolate chunks, caramel sauce and nuts gives it an amazing texture. Perfect winter dessert.  Or in an Affogato!

Course Dessert
Keyword chestnut, ice cream
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 35 minutes
freezing time 2 hours

Ingredients

  • 1 cup roasted chestnuts
  • 16 oz heavy cream
  • 16 oz whole milk
  • 1 cup mascovado sugar , divided (brown sugar can be substituted)
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp vanilla
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 1/3 cup chocolate chunks
  • 1/3 cup bourbon caramel, at room temperature so that it can be drizzled see Notes
  • 1/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans, or even candied chestnuts

Instructions

  1. Freeze the bowl of your ice cream maker at least 24 hours in advance

  2. Place a 8-9" metal baking pan in freezer to chill (unless of course you have a container with a lid designed to hold ice cream)

  3. Finely chop the chestnuts and place in a saucepan with 8oz of the milk, bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes, add contents to a Vitamix or food processor and blend until perfectly smooth, reserve. If you find for some reason that the mixture is too thick to purée smoothly, feel free to add in a splash of milk to help it along.

  4. Add cream, other 8oz of milk, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 cup honey and salt to a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until mixture reads 175f degrees (about 5-10 minutes)
  5. While cream mixture is heating, whisk the egg yolks and 1/4 cup sugar in a bowl until smooth - slowly whisk in 1 cup of warm cream mixture into yolk mixture to temper the yolks
  6. Add tempered yolk mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium low heat until mixture thickens and registers 180f degrees (about 7-10 minutes)

  7. Stir in chestnut puree and vanilla until well combined with custard.

  8. Strain custard into a bowl through a fine mesh strainer and cool until it is no longer steaming (about 10-20 minutes)
  9. Reserve 1 cup of the custard mixture into a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap and place in freezer
  10. Cover large custard bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or up to 24 hours
  11. Remove custards from refrigerator and freezer and scrape frozen custard into large bowl of custard - stir occasionally until frozen custard has fully dissolved

  12. Transfer custard to ice cream machine and churn until soft serve registers 21 degrees (15-25 minutes)  I just let it go to 25 minutes.

  13. Layer one third of the ice cream in the prepared frozen tin. Add one third of the choclate chunks, drizzle one third of the caramel evenly over the ice cream, and scatter one third of the nuts in the empty spaces, Swirl gently into the ice cream.

  14. Repeat until all the ice cream and add-ins are used up.

  15. Cover the tin tightly with plastic wrap and foil, and freeze until firm (at least 2 more hours) - serve

  16. To soften any leftover ice cream after storing in freezer, leave ice cream at room temperature until desired consistency or slow defrost in the refrigerator about 1 hour before serving for perfectly scoop-able ice cream

Recipe Notes

For the Salted Bourbon Caramel Sauce recipe, click here!

The pan that I initially store the ice cream in is the same one that I store it in.  I skip the step of transferring it to an airtight container.  By covering the ice cream with plastic wrap, and then with a tight covering of aluminum foil, I get a good seal.

Recipe inspired by Ful-Filled's Roasted Chestnut Ice Cream