almond brittle ice cream

When I bought Jeni's ice cream cookbook, one of the things that intrigued me the most was the lack of egg yolks in her recipes. Instead she uses cream cheese and thickeners (like tapioca starch). Now I'm not one for low-fat or no-fat (shudder) anything, and thought that egg yolks, even though high in fat, were what gave ice cream that rich, custard-y texture, so I was a bit worried (even though Jeni's ice cream doesn't boast to be low-fat at all).

First I had to decide on a flavour. Gooey butter cake? Salty caramel? Bangkok peanut? This was hard. I settled on the basic vanilla bean and added chunks of almond brittle (also from the book) for extra texture.

Holy crap this was some good ice cream! Like, really really good. Like this may be my new go-to ice cream base recipe. It's creamy and luscious even without the egg yolks. The texture was perfect and it softens up nicely for easy scooping.

You can find the vanilla bean ice cream recipe online here. I'll be trying another flavour later on this week, so watch for it soon.