Mandy’s Peanut Butter Ice Cream Recipe #1

UPDATE: I have tweaked this recipe. Check out Mandy’s Peanut Butter Ice Cream Recipe #2.

ORIGINAL RECIPE:

I had a request for this flavor from my trainer Mandy. I like peanut butter but I don’t find myself craving it like Mandy does. She pointed out that it’s easy enough to find peanut butter + other flavors in ice cream, but you rarely see just plain ol’ Peanut Butter ice cream, no chocolate, no banana, nothing else. I thought long and hard about what the flavor would be and decided it would be like frozen peanut butter fudge – smooth and creamy and sweet. With that in mind, I decided the Vanilla Bean Mascarpone Ice Cream recipe would be the base, and I would sub out some of the mascarpone for peanut butter. Fats play a very important part in ice cream formulas, and there needs to be a balance – not too buttery, not too watery. And yeah, peanut butter has some fat in it. It’s the good fat! Really!

As it turns out, of course Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home has a peanut butter ice cream recipe (with chocolate and honey, proving Mandy’s point) that I used for inspiration and guidance. She adds the peanut butter to the cream cheese that she regularly uses in her base as part of the binding mechanism of water to fat. So, I mixed a cup of natural peanut butter – no sugar or salt added to the peanut butter – with the cup of mascarpone. Let me just say right now, that mixture was a creamy yumminess! Her recipes always call for a little salt, and I have some vanilla salt I put in, and YES that could totally be a spread on something – maybe a bagel or a thick slice of toast. I shoulda taken a photo but it sort of gummed up in my whisk and wasn’t very photogenic. Once I poured the heated milk/sugar mixture over it, it melted in quite nicely.

This is a photo of a shot of peanut butter ice cream base. Yeah, I ate that. I originally planned to only put 3/4 cup of peanut butter in, and 3/4 cup of mascarpone, since the other recipe used 1 1/2 cups of mascarpone. I decided it might not be peanut-y enough and added a full cup of each instead. In the ice cream machine at 20 minutes, the batter isn’t this smooth any more.

It looks more like cookie dough, or cream of wheat. What?

Yeah, something’s wonky here. I guess some parts of it froze faster than others? The taste and texture is good straight out of the machine, so I put it in containers in the freezer. On first taste, I would say it needs less peanut butter/mascarpone and less sugar, although I think it does taste a lot like peanut butter fudge.

Print Recipe

Mandy's Peanut Butter Ice Cream - First Draft

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading...

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup whole milk
• 1 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup mascarpone
• 1 cup natural peanut butter, no salt, sugar or emulsifiers (like palm oil or shortening)
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• dash vanilla salt
• dash of my homebrewed Mexican vanilla extract

Instructions

1

Make a slurry of a couple tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch

2

Whisk the peanut butter and mascarpone together in a heat-proof bowl

3

Put the rest of the milk, the cream, sugar and corn syrup in a heavy pan over medium heat

4

Bring the milk/sugar to a boil; boil for 4 minutes

5

Remove from heat and whisk in the cornstarch/milk slurry

6

Return to the stove, bring to a boil and cook until thick (maybe 1-2 minutes)

7

Pour the hot milk/sugar mixture over the mascarpone/peanut butter mix, and whisk to incorporate

8

Strain into a ziplock bag or other container - there were hardly any strained solids, so this might not be necessary

9

Chill the base in an ice bath for 30 minutes or refrigerate until chilled

10

Pour into ice cream machine and churn according to your machine's instructions

Notes

First batch has odd visual texture, like it's chunky although I didn't taste or feel chunks of anything straight out of the machine.

It is still a little chunky-looking but no longer looks like cream of wheat! It’s a teeny bit crumbly too. The flavor is exactly what I was hoping for – it’s like peanut butter fudge, frozen. You can feel the crumbliness on your tongue but it isn’t crunchy at all, not like the Matcha Mango Lassi Frozen Yogurt.

Lovely closeup of my chipped bowl. 🙂

On the next batch, I think I’ll try less sugar, less peanut butter/mascarpone, and perhaps use less cream since there is already so much high-fat content. Maybe I should also reduce the cornstarch, since the recipe in the ice cream book only calls for 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon, and I used 2 tablespoons. Still, the flavor is yummy – can’t wait to get Mandy’s feedback!