Rose Ice Cream

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

We have a lovely climbing rose at the corner of our house. Every spring it starts the year by covering its self in beautiful flowers. The variety is called Joseph’s Coat because the buds start off orange, then change to sunset, peach, rose, and eventually a deep ruby as the flowers unfold and age. This rose also grows about 4-6 feet a year (we planted it two years ago and it’s almost to the roof!), so this year we had an 8 foot tall avalanche of roses. Once they all started to fade, I decided to do something with all of the petals. After clipping all of the flowers and removing the petals I had a gallon zip-lock bag full.

We decided to use them to make rose ice cream - and it was fantastic! It had an extremely complex and rich taste - we really couldn’t eat more than a scoopful at a time. I highly recommend it! We did have to use a drop of food coloring though, the mixture of pick and red petals with yellow egg whites was not at all appealing.

Rose Ice Cream
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz (excellent book!)

1 c whole milk
3/4 c sugar
2 c heavy cream
pinch of salt
2 - 4 c lightly packed rose petals
5 egg yolks

1. Warm the milk, sugar, 1 c of the cream, and salt in a sauce pan. Add the petals and stir until they are slightly wilted. Cover, remove from heat and let stand 1hour.
2. Strain the petals out of the mixture, pressing to extract as much flavor as possible. Discard petals.
3. Put remaining 1 c of cream into a separate bowl. Put the egg yolks into yet another bowl and whisk. (The bowl with the cream will eventually be in an ice bath, so prepare now!)
4. Rewarm the rose infusion, and slowly pour the rose mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Put the yolk-rose mixture back into the sauce pan.
5. Stir the yolk-rose mixture constantly over medium heat until the mixture thickens and coats your spoon or spatula.
6. Pour the yolk-rose mixture into the remaining cream. Stir until cool in an ice bath. Add food coloring if necessary.
7. Chill thoroughly in the fridge, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the directions.

You can make this with any other infusion - we also tried it with chocolate mint from Charlestown Farm - it was divine! (That also needed food coloring - very pale green + orange-ish yellow do not mix well).