Pumpkin ice cream with salted caramel sauce and Cantonese walnuts

This recipe's title contains several autumn elements, such as pumpkin and walnuts. Virginia, from the food blog Sweet&Sour , has combined them to keep them cold... making an ice cream that is a real delight!

This time she uses the Kitchen Aid to make this creamy pumpkin ice cream, and shows us that ice cream is no longer reserved for summer, and becomes not only a delicious dessert but also a good representation of seasonal products. We leave you with the recipe.

Who said that ice cream is only for summer? Big mistake, at least in my humble opinion. I usually make ice cream all year round, especially using seasonal products. At home they thank me for it, and they also enjoy flavours that would almost certainly be lost otherwise.

Like this ice cream that tastes like pure autumn, loaded with spices, with that salted caramel coating and those Cantonese nuts. I am convinced that it can accompany those afternoons spent on the sofa and blanket wonderfully, even though it may seem contradictory.

Maybe I haven't convinced you, but I'm sure that if you dare to try it, you'll remember these words and say "how right I was...".

It is also ideal to finish any light meal, or to treat yourself from time to time.

I have prepared it with the KitchenAid ice cream accessory , thanks to which I have ice cream all year round. One of the most useful KitchenAid accessories in my opinion. In 20-25 minutes we have the ice cream we want ready to enjoy. We just have to be careful to keep the ice cream container in the freezer 24 hours beforehand. In my case, except when I prepare ice cream, I always keep it there, and I have ice cream whenever I feel like it.

Let's start with the recipe, which is very simple, prepared with the Butternut variety, also called Peanut, and which has a slightly sweet touch and a nutty aftertaste that goes wonderfully with the mixture of spices.

Ingredients

For the ice cream: (For approximately 1 liter)

• 1 Butternut squash, approx. 1 kg

• 250 ml of cream 35% mg

• 250 ml of Whole Milk

• 150 gr. Light Brown Sugar

• 1 tsp of grated fresh ginger or if we don't have it, ground ginger

• 5 egg yolks

• 1 tsp of cinnamon powder

• 1/4 Tsp of common salt

• 1/8 Tsp Ground Nutmeg

• Salted Caramel Sauce

• Cantonese Walnuts

• Speculoos crumbs or other ground spiced biscuit

* 1 Tsp is equivalent to 1 Coffee Teaspoon (5 ml) and 1 Tbsp is equivalent to 1 Soup Spoon (15 ml).

Preparation

We start by roasting the pumpkin:

Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

We fill a baking dish with a finger's worth of water. We set it aside.

Cut the pumpkin in half, from top to bottom. Remove the seeds and any strings it may have and leave the clean pumpkin pulp. If you toast the seeds, they can be used as an appetizer or to decorate your preparations or add to your bread.

We coat the flesh of each portion of pumpkin with a layer of EVOO. We place it in the ovenproof dish with the flesh facing up and place it in the preheated oven for about 50 minutes, or until the tip of a knife inserts it and offers no resistance. The time will depend on the size of the pumpkin we use.

After this time, remove from the oven and let cool. Remove the pumpkin pulp with a spoon. This will be easy, as it becomes like real butter.

We blend it until it becomes a puree. We reserve 250 gr. of this puree, which will be the amount we use for this preparation. We can freeze the rest or keep it in the fridge for up to three days, for other preparations.

Let's go with the ice cream cream:

KitchenAid food processor and KitchenAid Refrigerator Accessory

In a medium saucepan, mix the milk, cream, 100 g of the sugar and the grated ginger until the sugar dissolves and the mixture just begins to boil.

In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, the rest of the sugar, salt, cinnamon and grated nutmeg. If you use ground ginger, add it here as well.

When the milk mixture reaches boiling point, pour it in a thin stream over the egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly so that the yolks do not curdle with the heat. Once everything is well mixed, pour it back into the saucepan and, stirring continuously over medium heat, cook until the cream thickens to the point that it covers the back of a wooden spoon and when you mark a horizontal line with your finger, the cream maintains the shape of the edges of the line.

Remove from heat and mix with the reserved pumpkin puree.

We let the mixture cool, cover it with cling film that should touch the surface of the cream so that it doesn't form a film, and put it in the fridge for several hours. It's better to put it overnight. The flavours will settle.

KitchenAid food processor and KitchenAid Refrigerator Accessory

Once the preparation has cooled, we put it in our KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker and churn it for 20-25 minutes at speed 1. After that time, our ice cream will be ready, which will not only have cooled, but will have tripled in volume, with the air introduced by the constantly rotating blades, and it will be as creamy as you can see in the images.

We put it in a metal container covered with film and then put it in the freezer for 2-3 hours to harden.

Served with salted caramel sauce, chopped Cantonese walnuts and speculoos crumbs.

A real delight, absolutely addictive!!!

Enjoy.