Tahini Crunch Ice Cream

Taking a break from sewing for the moment (wow, I’ve been doing a LOT of that)…

My family recently hosted our annual ice cream social, which of course meant that I had to come up with some original flavors of homemade ice cream to serve! You’d think that it would get harder and harder every year to find something interesting and new to make, but there are just so many flavor combinations that I’ve never lacked for inspiration.

I really wanted to use chocolate-covered cornflakes as a mix-in this year, and was trying to decide on an ice cream base when I spied a jar of tahini in the fridge. Just like that, a new flavor was born!

This tahini ice cream is faintly reminiscent of peanut butter but with an added savory element, set off nicely by the dark chocolate-covered cornflakes and a swirl of caramel sauce. It churns up relatively quickly, perhaps aided by the added fat content of the tahini– like many homemade ice creams it freezes up pretty hard, but once it softens enough to scoop it doesn’t collapse into a melty puddle, so it has that going for it. As an added bonus, it pairs wonderfully with dark beer.

*By the way, did you notice my awesome skull-shaped spoons?

Tahini Crunch Ice Cream

Ice cream base (very slightly adapted from Floating Kitchen)

4 oz. cream cheese

4 oz. tahini

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

1 tbs. vodka

1 tbs. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. salt

1. Heat cream cheese, tahini, and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until they incorporate into a loose dough-like consistency. This will help work out any cream cheese lumps. Remove from heat.

2. Slowly add milk and whisk until smooth and thick. Add cream, vodka, and vanilla and season to taste with salt. Adding the cold liquids at this stage will help cool your mixture down faster.

3. Chill completely and churn according to manufacturer’s instructions in your ice cream maker.

Chocolate covered cornflakes:

Melt 3 oz. semisweet chocolate and pour over 2 cups of cornflakes on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Stir until coated and let chill until firm. You really do want to coat them as completely as possible, or they’ll get soggy in your ice cream.

(I will note that this picture shows double that amount– I wasn’t sure how much to make so I erred on the side of caution. You should only need the smaller amount, though.)

Break into small pieces to stir into ice cream mixture in the last minute of churning.

To swirl in (storebought) caramel sauce, layer globs of it with your ice cream in your freezing container before putting in the freezer to firm up.