Cookies and Candids

Thank you, Bi-Rite Creamery for making a cookbook with pictures good enough to eat and enticing enough to make. Thank you, summer, for weather warm enough to call for the making of ice cream. Delicious ice cream. This recipe is fantastic – creamy and rich, with deep coconut flavors, crunchy sweet coconut bits, and a zesty lime aftertaste. Perfect for summer, perfect on it’s own or paired with fresh mango chunks, or I can imagine it would be a good ice cream sandwich filling with a chewy ginger or chocolate cookie. I added the lime – otherwise, the recipe below is exactly as the Bi-Rite goddesses invented.

Ingredients:

1 cup unsweetened dried shredded coconut
¼ cup sweetened dried shredded coconut
2 cups heavy cream
1¼ cups 1% milk
¾ cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
5 large egg yolks
1 lime, zested

Toast the coconut:

Toast the coconut on the stovetop in a dry skillet over medium heat. Toast the two types separately, and stir constantly to prevent burning. Remove from heat and let cool.

Infuse the milk/cream:

1. In a heavy saucepan, stir together the cream, milk, half of the sugar, and the salt.
2. Put the pan over medium-high heat. When the mixture just begins to bubble around the edges, stir in the unsweetened coconut. When slight bubbling resumes around the edges of the pan, remove from the heat and cover the pan. Let steep for 15-20 minutes, or until a distinct coconut flavor has infused into the liquid. Taste it to monitor the progress.
3. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl, pressing on the coconut to extract as much liquid as possible. Rinse the pan, and return the infused cream to the saucepan.

Make the base:

1. In a medium heatproof bowl, whisk the yolks just to break them up then whisk in the remaining sugar. Set aside.
2. Uncover the cream mixture and put the pan over medium-high heat. When the mixture approaches a bare simmer, reduce the heat to medium.
3. Carefully scoop out about ½ cup of the hot cream mixture and, whisking the eggs constantly, add the cream to the bowl with the egg yolks. Repeat, adding another ½ cup of the hot cream to the bowl with the yolks. Using a heatproof rubber spatula, stir the cream in the saucepan as you slowly pour the egg-and-cream mixture from the bowl into the pan.
4. Cook the mixture carefully over medium heat, stirring constantly until it is thickened, coats the back of a spatula, and holds a clear path when you run your finger across the spatula, one to two minutes longer.
5. Strain the base through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean container. Set the container into an ice-water bath, wash your spatula, and use it to stir the base occasionally until it is cool. Remove the container from the ice-water bath, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate the base for at least two hours or overnight.

Freeze the ice cream:

Freeze in your ice cream according to the manufacturer’s instructions. While the ice cream is churning, put the container you will use to store the ice cream into the freezer. Add ¾ of the sweetened coconut and all of the lime zest in the last minute or so of churning, or fold it in by hand after transferring the ice cream to the chilled container.  Enjoy right away or, for a firmer ice cream, freeze for at least four hours. Sprinkle the remaining sweetened coconut on top of each serving of ice cream.