Week Two: Winter Wonderland

For some reason, I had a lot of problems getting it straight what exactly Jack Frost is doing in The Christmas Song: he would variously be nipping at your toes, knocking at your door and, on one memorable occasion, roasting on an open fire. That’s what the chestnuts are doing, although my chestnuts came pre-roasted (and, needless to say, de-husked.) Chestnuts form the base of my ice cream for the ‘winter wonderland’; they’ve fallen out of favour as a winter snack now, but they’re in the song for a reason and you can still get roasted chestnuts from stands, albeit mostly at Victorian Christmas markets.

There are some interesting measurements in the Gunter’s confectioners’ books. My personal favourite is from Nutt’s plain ice cream recipe that called for “as much powdered sugar as will lay on half-a-crown”; having mislaid my half-a-crown, I favoured the more precise 6 ounces from Jarrin and Jeanes (Jeanes actually said 5 to 6.) Jeanes, however, included 2 pints of chestnuts in their husks for chestnut ice cream, but not knowing how much volume a husked chestnut takes up, Jarrin’s 3 or 4 dozen was easier to follow. I went for 48, I like a lot of flavour. Neither was helpful on how much orange blossom water to use, just a little to flavour, or not if you’d rather. I looked up recipes that use chestnuts and they usually went for about 1 to 1.5 tablespoons of water for 750g to 1kg of chestnuts; 48 chestnuts weighed basically 235 grams, so I thought half a tablespoon would be about right.

Ingredients

I forgot to photograph the ingredients, so just imagine this picture with some eggs, chestnuts and a bottle of orange blossom water.

This recipe was using the amounts given by Jarrin and Jeanes, but again I’ve included the percentages so any amount can be made.

323.72g single (19% fat) cream (27.88%)

254.98g whipping (39% fat) cream (21.96%)

235.71g of chestnuts, de-husked and roasted (20.3%)

120g egg yolk (approximately 8 to 9 medium eggs) (10.3341%)

219.22g caster sugar (18.88%) (see my first post for what caster sugar is)

7.5g orange blossom water (0.6459%)

Method 

1. Blend the chestnuts together with the cream - I used a wet/dry grinder, and did it in batches. Don’t worry if what you get at the end is a bit variable in texture, it all gets mixed together.

2. Put the chestnut cream, egg yolks, sugar and orange blossom water into a large pan and bring up to near boil, whisking constantly. 

3. When you can draw a clear line in the custard on the back of a spoon, the custard is ready. (You can also use a thermometer, and if you’re using unpasteurised ingredients, probably should to make sure you’re cooking them safely.)

4. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a large bowl, then chill the mixture. For maximal food safety, use an ice bath to get below 20C quickly before putting it in the fridge. Leave for several hours, preferably overnight.

5. Just prior to churning, whisk the mixture together - I use a stand mixer and balloon whisk.

6. Churn according to your ice cream machine’s instructions. 

7. When the ice cream resembles a soft serve texture, put into a container and freeze for at least four hours. 

I have mixed feelings on this ice cream. The taste is lovely, very warm and comforting, but a little too grainy on the texture. That’s the problem with using blended nuts, it’s never going to be completely smooth. I think perhaps a repeat would see me not pulverise the chestnuts so much and actually feature bits of nut in the ice cream, it wouldn’t be in keeping with the very smooth textures preferred by the Victorians, but I’ve modified other things before so why not that too?