Results - Roast Peaches with Hoegaarden Ice Cream

For the first time making beer Ice cream, I'm pretty proud of myself. I'm also pretty happy with the fact that the ice cream turned out pretty smooth and fluffy, even thought I don't own or had access to an ice cream machine. You can see a photo of the creation below.

Roast Peaches with Hoegaarden Ice Cream

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Like I said in my earlier post, we had a tray of beautifully fresh and fragrant peaches. After caramelising the sugar and then adding them, they created an intense aroma that made me want to fish them straight out of the pan even before they had entered the oven.

Fresh Peaches from Uralla

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The recipe called for Hoegaarden beer, but at the moment I'm in country NSW, and all the ingredients I require weren't quite available. Instead of using Hoegaarden, I used Haagen. Haagen is an Australian beer which is brewed in traditional German style. It made for a very beer-y ice cream, and I assume that is the whole point of the ice cream flavour. I'm sure that Hoegaarden can be substituted for any type of beer...pick your favourite and off you go. After tasting it, I immediately thought of Beez Neez, the honey flavour in the beer would make the ice cream take on a slight beer/honey flavour. I also had to leave out the peach schnapps, I could find every other type of schnapps but not peach. I'm one to follow these recipes as closely as possible, considering what the whole point of this exercise is, but in the end the flavour of the peach and caramel was too perfect that I think the schnapps may have ruined it.

Haagen Beer

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Pouring the beer into the ice cream base

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As I said earlier, I don't have an ice cream machine. I resorted to whipping the mixture every hour for 10 minutes over about 6 hours. It was well worth all the hard work. Although in the very outer edge of the finished product it contained a few icicles, the centre was really creamy and fluffy like most gourmet ice creams. I really had my doubts about 'beer ice cream', but the combination with the roast peaches was fantastic. Colin Fassnidge's imagination to marry these two flavours is brilliant. Never would I have thought these would be great to combine in one dish. I can't wait to make my way to Four in Hand to experience other marriages they have come up with.

To end the post I thought I would include the taste testers reaction to the dessert.

Father in-law: "That was delicious! Well worth the wait" (It took me 45 minutes instead of 20 minutes because I stuffed the caramel....but that's another story)

Mother in-law: "It was superb, completely different to anything I have ever tried!"

Daz: "I'm not the ice-creams biggest fan, peaches were good though" (I can always trust Daz to give an unbiased opinion) 

Me: "I can't believe I pulled that off in one day and in SOMEONE ELSES kitchen!"

One last look at the creation.

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Roast Peaches with Hoegaarden Ice-cream

Restaurant: Four in Hand (NSW)

Recipe from Chef Colin Fassnidge (appears on Gourmet Traveler website)

2009 Rating: Number 76, 1 Star

At this very moment I'm in country NSW spending christmas with my in-laws. We had a big box of peaches lying around and I thought I might put something together with them. After a quick search on the Gourmet Traveler website, I came across this dessert recipe. Looked to intriguing to pass it up, even though considering I dont have an ice-cream machine at my disposal.

Serves 6 

INGREDIENTS:

300 gm caster sugar

6 ripe peaches

100 ml peach schnapps

100 gm butter

Hoegaarden ice-cream

500 ml (2 cups) pouring cream

300 ml milk

150 gm caster sugar

10 egg yolks

4 leaves of gelatine (gold strength), softened in cold water

330 ml Hoegaarden beer

METHOD:

 

1. For Hoegaarden ice-cream, combine cream, milk, sugar and egg yolks in a saucepan, and whisk until smooth. Stir over medium heat until mixture is thick and coats the back of a wooden spoon, remove from heat. Squeeze excess water from gelatine, add to cream mixture and whisk until gelatine dissolves. Cool for 1 hour. Add beer, whisk to combine, strain mixture and freeze in an ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Store in freezer until needed. Makes about 1.8 litres.

2. Preheat oven to 200C. Combine sugar and 300ml water in an oven-proof frying pan over medium heat, bring to the boil and cook for 15 minutes or until syrup just starts to caramelise. Add peaches and turn to coat in caramel. Place in oven and roast for 10 minutes or until tender. Remove from oven, place over medium heat and add schnapps and butter. Continue cooking peaches, basting and turning, for 10 minutes or until peaches are golden. Serve peaches drizzled with warm syrup and Hoegaarden ice-cream to the side.

This ones going to be interesting, I've made home made ice-cream by hand before and it turned out a disaster. I will be so glad if I can pull it off! Wish me luck! (Results here)