Homemade Ube Ice Cream

Have you ever got a Halo-Halo served with vanilla ice cream? How mad were you? To top it off, you wanted to get your Ube ice cream fix but the closest Asian Market sells a quart and a half for an amount pretty close to $10. The outrage! See red no more my friends. I have a Homemade Ube Ice Cream recipe primed and ready for you. Oh and by the way, this is Ube Macapuno ice cream.

So grab your apron, wipe your saliva and let’s get this in the freezer.

Lightbulb!

I was on Facebook the other day and someone posted their picture of their homemade ube ice cream. She too commented on the price of this purple, frozen goodness in her city. To no one’s surprise, pretty much everyone else who commented said the same about where they live.

The biggest “Ah ha!” that I got from her post was that the process of the Ube Halaya recipe, that I have, can be altered to make ice cream. I would, of course, have to add more heavy whipping cream to increase the ice cream like consistency. No problem!

Wheels still spinning, I knew that there is something else that I can add to throw this over the top. I thought about some of the best ube ice creams that I devoured as a kids. Then I remembered, macapuno (coconut) strings!

It was time to go to my kitchen/lab. Thank you, Liberty from Las Vegas! The following recipe is good to go for delicious Homemade Ube Ice Cream, but I am going to do some further exploring with the ingredients. As soon as we finish this batch, I want to do a few things to add to the fat content. I know that is what you wanted to hear. So go ahead and try this recipe out or wait a bit until I post my changes.

Homemade Ube Ice Cream with Macapuno

In all honesty, making ube ice cream is easier than the halaya. There’s less babysitting at the stove. Although the process for halaya is more “Bang, bang, bang!”, and the ice cream has to be split up into to parts with some wait time.

Liberty had a great point about working with cold ingredients, when making ice cream. With halaya, all the ingredients go in the pot, with some heat and then you start the cooldown process as soon as you reach the desired consistency. So that definitely had to change for ice cream.

I figured that the base of halaya can remain the same. Simmer up the grated ube and coconut milk. Add the butter, sugar and sweetened condensed milk and let it cool down to room temperature.

While the base is sitting, this was a good time to drain the syrup from a cup of macapuno strings. I did this because I did not want the super sweetness of the syrup to add to the ice cream. Completely draining all of the syrup from it is difficult, without drying them out, so as much as possible is best.

Once drained, I rough chopped the mound of strings just to compliment the easy of eating/licking ice cream. No, specific length. If some are longer than others, the variety will be a treat while eating.

Once the base was a bit cooler, I mixed the chopped strings in. At this point there is no need to mix it well.

When at room temperature, I placed the bowl into the refrigerator to cool it down to the refrigeration temperature. This will help your fridge out a little, to keep it from over working to cool something so warm. Plus, you probably don’t want to put warm ingredients next to milk or anything that might go bad.

Time to go Heavy

Now that the base is nice and cool, the heavy whipping cream can now be added in. This is where some patience and some machinery can come in handy.

I added the heavy whipping cream and stirred it first with a spatula, just so I didn’t get too much splashing with the whisk attachment. I also added a teaspoon of Ube flavor to deepen the color that I would lose with the heavy cream.

Then I whisked away on a high speed, with the hand mixer. I knew that I wouldn’t achieve peaks, like when whipping heavy cream alone but I knew that I wanted to thicken my contents quite considerably. I spun away for about 10 minutes. The contents thickened and I was able to form slight mounds if I scooped and poured with a spoon.

The Filipino In You

Now I needed a freezer safe, durable container. You can get this at most grocery stores, you now it is good for the freezer and the contents fit perfectly in it. Yes, I am a Filipino. Although, instead of getting tricked and finding frozen leftovers when hoping for eclairs, this is so much better! It’s a dream come true from our childhood.

Best of all, you know for sure nobody licked this at the grocery store.

Enjoy and I hope that you didn’t forget to fry up some Turon.

Masayang Pagluluto!

Kain na tayo!

Don’t forget to check out what is at the Korpino Feed Street Market!!!