double dip: ginger and cranberry ice creams

The good news is that I finally got to make that gingersnap ice cream (um, minus the gingersnaps). The bad news is that no new stars were born in the ice cream firmament this weekend.

The gingersnap ice cream recipe I lifted from the Times was very different from the two Chez Panisse Desserts ice creams I have made, mainly because it used two egg yolks instead of six. It was still good, don't get me wrong, and I loved its pure gingeriness. But it's hard to go balk to two yolks when you've become accustomed to six: this ice cream was noticeably icier and less smooth than its predecessors. (Besides, when you use the six yolks, you save the whites and have a spa-like egg-white omelette for breakfast the next day, so you see, it's actually quite healthy in the end.) I did not add gingersnaps because he who was dispatched for gingersnaps came back with the wheat-free, gluten-free variety. I nibbled at one, trying to keep an open mind, but it was just not the thing, not the thing at all. Luckily, the ice cream's strong ginger flavor made the fold-in unnecessary. I think it would be delicious with all kinds of fruit desserts.

GINGERSNAP ICE CREAM

-Grate two ounces of ginger into two cups of heavy cream. Add 1/4 tsp salt (N.B. I'm not sure why this needed salt; I have seen no other ice cream recipes with salt, but maybe it brought out the ginger flavor; I couldn't tell) and heat over medium low until it begins to steam, about 150 on a candy thermometer. Turn off heat and let steep for three minutes. Strain, pressing on ginger to extract as much cream as possible.
-Whisk two large egg yolks with 1/2 cup sugar until they are pale yellow (about a minute and a half). Slowly whisk in the gingery cream.
-Slowly heat, stirring constantly, until mixture reaches 150 degrees. Cool for ten minutes, whisk in 1 cup of whole milk, and chill thoroughly.
-When mixture is chilled, freeze in an ice cream maker. If you want to add crushed gingersnaps, add them after you've frozen it in the maker but before you put it back into the freezer to firm up. Obviously, you could make amazing, tiny ice cream sandwiches.

See these lovely, ruddy cranberries? I turned them into an oddly foamy, pepto-bismol pink ice cream that muffled their tartness under a blanket of cream. It was OK, but let's just say that I made the ice cream last weekend, it's Thursday now, and there's still some hanging out in the freezer (I realize that I should be inclined to like it because it's a wallflower dessert--apropos of which, was everybody else pained by the moment in the Martha Stewart Apprentice last night when Alexis said, "Dawn, I like you, because I'm always the person everyone on the team likes least"?). I should have taken the hints in Chez Panisse Desserts that this is really a novelty ice cream for the holidays. Oh well. What interested me was that it had NO eggs in it: it's just cooked cranberry puree (from a 12-oz bag), 2 cups of cream, a cup of milk, and a cup of sugar. Because I don't have a food mill, I pureed the cooked cranberries by forcing them through a strainer with a wooden spoon, which made me feel pretty hard core. Grrr. But I think next time we'll try something more conventional, like . . . CHOCOLATE!