"Shave and a Haircut, Two Pits"

It’s hot out there.

Big surprise, right? Temperatures are supposed to be around a hundred degrees in the middle of the summer.

Not that I’m complaining. I’m from California, so you won’t see me getting out of the kitchen any time soon.

It’s just that there are suddenly all these brown lawns all over the place. True, since it’s practically illegal to water your lawn during the summer in LA, I’m kind of used to that too. But this is the Midwest.  I thought it was guaranteed to be green for about six months a year. On the bright side, no one here has gone so far as landscaping their front yard with green concrete, but the plants are definitely taking a beating.

Not to worry, though, I’ve got a solution.

Ice cream.

Even better, seasonal ice cream.

Not that I’m an expert on the seasons or anything. I’m a former Angelino after all. But even in LA I knew a thing or two about what fruits showed up during the various seasons. I mean that literally. I knew two things.

I knew that during the winter, the seedless oranges were perfect from Thanksgiving until Valentine’s day. The rest of the country got snow. We got Washington navels. I also knew that during the summer, we got all those juicy stone fruits you couldn’t get any other time of year. There were cherries, nectarines, apricots, plums, and best of all, peaches.

I have since learned to make peach cobbler and bourbon/brown sugar peach sauce but back then we just ate them raw. On occasion we’d also cut them up and put them over our ice cream, but more often we’d use them for peach ice cream.

I don’t really remember how my mom used to make it back then. It had pieces of chopped peach throughout and got a nice boost from my personal favorite flavor, almond extract. But that’s all I remember.

It was pretty good, although the frozen peaches didn’t have same taste they had at room temperature (or 100°F). That’s the problem with cold foods. They need an extra concentration of flavor to get them to the right level. It’s got something to do with the freezing process and the way water molecules align into crystals as they turn to ice, but I’ll spare you the pseudo-science lecture.

Anyway, to avoid this small problem, I opted to puree the peaches into the custard base so it would have a uniform flavor and texture throughout.

It worked too.

Although the pistachio (see here, again) is still my personal favorite thus far, the Peach & Brown Sugar is my wife’s new favorite and was also very well-received by my two daughters and our over-nighting niece.

It’s even good after it melts, but despite the heat, the risk of that is pretty low.

They’ll eat it that quickly.

Peaches and Brown Sugar Ice Cream
(about 2 quarts)
1 ½ cup milk
¾ cup sugar
2 T flour
A few grains salt
2 eggs or 3 yolks (pasteurized, if possible, see note)
1 ½ cup cream
1 ½ pounds peaches, peeled and chopped
¼ t almond extract
¼ cup brown sugar

1. Heat milk to 180-190ºF with sugar, flour and salt, stirring until thick, cover for 10 minutes.
2. Beat eggs and add ½ cup of mixture while beating, then add eggs to mixture.

HEALTH NOTE:     Since you’re dealing with eggs here, you need to take care when cooking the custard. Too much cooking and the custard gets lumpy, too little and you risk salmonella.  Another alternative is to use pasteurized eggs.

1. Heat the mixture for one minute over medium, then cool with plastic wrap or wax paper pressed onto the top of the mixture to keep it from developing a skin. Cool for several hours or overnight.
2. Before you add the peaches to the custard, you’ll need to peel them. To do this, score their bottoms with a knife then drop them one or two at a time into boiling water. After a minute, remove the peaches from the water and drop them in an ice bath. The skins won’t quite slip off, but peeling will be very easy. Then just cut the peaches in half, remove the pits, and drop them into the custard.
3. Next add the cream, almond extract and brown sugar and puree the mixture with an immersion blender until it has a smooth, uniform consistency.
4. Freeze.

Photo Credit: “The Coin of the Realm,” from the state of Georgia. 

As part of a new deficit reduction plan, every time someone says “Hot enough for you?”they must pay the US Treasury twenty-five cents, although in Georgia, they may pay in peaches. Do you think this is sensible policy? Leave your thoughtful opinion in a comment.