Mascarpone Ice Cream

There’s a lot of ice cream recipes floating around the inter-webs.  I found however, that evenly splitting the cream to milk ratio gives a delicate mouth feel because the mascarpone in this reicpe has such a high fat content, especially if made from scratch with the recipe that’s here.

There’s always the option too, of using 2 cups of cream and 1 cup of whole milk. Whatever you do, don’t use anything less than whole milk and preferably use organic.

This scoop of Mascarpone Ice cream was part of a dessert comprising of red wine poached pears and praline Lyonneaise shortbread.

David Schmit Photography

1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup vanilla sugar*
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
5 large egg yolks
1 cup (8 oz) mascarpone cheese, preferably homemade
Zest of 1 lemon, optional

Prepare an ice bath by placing ice and cold water in a large bowl. Set a smaller bowl in the ice water. Set a fine mesh strainer in the smaller bowl.  Set it all aside.

Heat the cream, milk, sugars, and salt in a saucepan over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. Meanwhile, in a large bowl whisk the egg yolks.  Slowly whisk half of the warm cream mixture into the egg yolks. (This is called “tempering” the eggs. You want to slowly add the hot mixture to gradually raise the temperature of the egg yolks otherwise you may end up with scrambled eggs.)

Return the egg-cream mixture to the rest of the cream in the saucepan. Continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the custard has thickened enough so that it coats the back of a spoon and holds a line drawn with your finger, about 5 minutes or about 170 degree F. (The texture of the custard is called “nappé” when it reaches this stage.)

Immediately pour through the fine mesh strainer into the container set inside the prepared ice bath.  Remove the strainer and whisk in the mascarpone cheese and lemon zest (if adding). 

Let the custard cool, stirring frequently, for about 30 minutes. Place plastic wrap directly on the surface of the custard and set it in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or ideally overnight.

Once the custard is cold, transfer the ice cream base to an ice cream machine and churn per the manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer the ice cream to another container and freeze.

*If you don’t have vanilla sugar just use 3/4 cup total of granulated sugar with 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract or the seeds of one pliable vanilla bean.