White Chocolate Lemon Ice Cream

I’ve moved! I’m no longer a Northern California girl, though at heart I always will be. I now live in the desert of San Bernardino, CA, east of Los Angeles. I’ve moved into a wonderful house that’s probably double the size of the house I left. Moving was a disaster, but when isn’t it? It’s always stressful, it always could go smoother, but it always ends. And this time it ended 8 1/2 hours away in a beautiful house in the middle of the desert.

I was worried I’d hate it here. But I really don’t. It’s beautiful. It isn’t the ocean. And it isn’t the forests. But it’s the desert. I’m surrounded by cactus, by Joshua trees, and I have quail and roadrunner running through my backyard. It’s beautiful in it’s own deserted way. I start my job a week from today, so until then, I’m just getting my house in order and playing around with my nice kitchen.

Funny enough though, the heat here isn’t as bad as Sacramento, which I just left. The day we moved it hit 108 in Sacramento. It’s been mid-90’s here. That’s a lot more bearable. Today even I didn’t have my AC on until about 1PM and my house was only 75 degrees.

But we still think of heat when we think of the desert, so to celebrate my arrival I decided to join in with We Should Cocoa’s (conceived by Choclette and Chele) challenge this month – chocolate ice creams and toppings hosted at Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary.

My favorite ice cream of all time is Orange Chocolate. I decided to take a twist on that and use white chocolate and lemon. It is SO satisfying! And because this town is so small and doesn’t have an ice cream parlor, I guess I’ll have to be my own! There will hopefully be more ice cream recipes to come in the future.

White Chocolate Lemon Ice Cream

Ingredients
2 cups heavy whipping cream, divided
3/4 cup milk
zest from 2 lemons
9 oz Ghiradelli white chocolate chips
6 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
few grains of salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp orange extract

Directions

1. In a heavy pot, combine 1 cup of cream, milk, and lemon zest. Stir over medium heat until the mixture begins to simmer. Remove from heat and cover the pot with a lid. Set aside for 20 minutes.

2. In another bowl, pour the chocolate chips. In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat 2/3 cups heavy cream. Stir often until it gets very hot. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Whisk the cream with the chocolate until it melts and reaches a smooth consistency.

3. In another bowl whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, salt, and the remaining 1/3 cup of heavy cream.

4. After the zest mixture has sat for 20 minutes, reheat and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat. Slowly add the hot zest mixture to the eggs, making sure to beat the eggs constantly so they don’t cook. Return to the pot and cook the custard until the temperature reaches 174 degrees on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat.

5. Gradually stir half the custard into the melted white chocolate, then return to pot and stir well. Stir in vanilla. Strain the custard through a very fine strainer over a large bowl.

6. Allow to cool. Once cool, cover with a paper towel covered by plastic wrap. Let sit in the fridge for 6 hours to overnight.

7. Once the mixture has chilled, remove from the fridge and stir. Pour into ice cream maker and churn according to the ice cream maker instructions. When there’s 5 minutes left before the ice cream is done, add the orange extract. Place in the freezer to completely freeze until ready to eat.

* Besides We Should Cocoa, this recipe is being shared with Mix It Up Monday