Homemade nougat ice cream

How to prepare a Jijona nougat ice cream. Perhaps one of the ice creams that they like the most at home is nougat , with stumbling blocks, the way it should be and how connoisseurs prepare it in Alicante . With all the flavor of Xixona and a smooth texture but with a nougat piece prize that plays between tablespoons and tablespoons, it makes this ice cream recipe , king and delicious in any season of the year, from summer to Christmas.

Nougat is par excellence one of the star sweets of Christmas parties, along with polvorones and Roscón de Reyes . Although you are not mistaken, it is a timeless dessert, it can be taken both in Nadal and in the middle of August. Within the wide range of nougats that we find in Nadal at home we are left with one: the Nougat to the Stone , an artisan variant that is made in Xixona with the aroma of lemon and cinnamon. It is not usually very commercialized because it has no preservatives and it can be obtained only during the Christmas campaign, or throughout the year if you go to Xixona (Alicante) , where we got it in August last year at the Nougat Museum . It would be a sin to use it for an ice cream … or not, I leave it to your choice. What was clear to me is that this flavor of almond paste, the touch of cinnamon and lemon would look great on an ice cream so, in addition to using a tablet of nougat from Xixona , I have flavored the milk with lemon peel and cinnamon stick . I assure you that the result is fantastic.

With this recipe I will introduce you to the world of ice cream in an easy way, in later recipes I will transmit the different techniques that I have learned in various courses on Ice Cream, Sorbets and other frozen desserts . From how to prepare this nougat ice cream with or without a refrigerator, to how to make others with layers of different flavors, preparing the famous frozen bombs, veining or marbling your own recipes, you will see how you get hooked on this home-made world. I hope you like them because once you start with one you can’t stop, also today’s recipe comes with a gift from friend Noceda and his adaptation of this ice cream, much better than mine because he does it with his beautiful daughter Alicia, thank you friend.

Preparation of flavored milk

1. The first step is to prepare the ingredients with which we are going to flavor the milk. We wash the lemon very well and peel its skin in a fine way, without much white that then makes the dessert bitter.
2. We heat the milk over medium heat almost to the boiling point. We lower the temperature and remove from the heat, add the lemon peel and the cinnamon sticks. We leave everything to rest for 5 minutes infusing the milk. We reserve.

Preparation of nougat ice cream

We already have the base to start with our ice cream, we can do it with or without a refrigerator. This recipe with the same ingredients I have prepared in both ways, the flavor is the same but the texture is different, the creaminess is greater with the refrigerator but I assure you that it is good in both ways. The fat base of whole milk prevents crystallization and by providing cream or milk with 35% fat, we will achieve an extra creamy texture.

This ice cream is one of the cream type, they are the easiest to prepare because they will come out yes or yes, in fact the custard before the ice cream is very good by itself. The final consistency depends on the size of the ice crystals that form and the proportion of sugar that covers them. In this case, having so much fat, the ice crystals are very small, also with the nougat sugar and the extra sugar or honey that we add, these are kept separate, resulting in a smooth and super creamy ice cream texture. As you can see in the photo, the ice cream in a few minutes (the ones I took to make it) was already melting, if it was a sherbet type and had more ice crystals it would stay longer.

After the technical paragraph we continue with the recipe 🙂

1. Add the liquid cream to the infused milk and heat over low heat until it hardens.
2. While we separate the eggs. Some of you have asked me by email if there is any trick to separate the eggs without spilling them. The truth is that to start the best thing is to crack the egg with more care than normal, exactly in the center to make an opening between the two halves in which the thumb fits, we can help ourselves with a knife. We hold the egg in a bowl and with the wider end down, carefully lift the smaller half of the shell. Part of the white will fall into the bowl, while the yolk will remain in the larger half of the shell. Carefully slide the yolk towards the small piece of the shell and then again towards the large one so that the rest of the white falls into the bowl. And from there to another bowl with the rest of the yolks that we have separated. It seems easy and it is, but it is best to do it several times, practice will make it super easy.
3. Add the sugar to the yolks and beat manually with a few rods until it stays like a cream. We break half the tablet of the nougat (one for the cream and another for the stumbles) and cut into cubes, add them to the cream-milk cream with the yolks, the sugar and a pinch of salt. We beat everything very well until the ingredients are well integrated. We leave a few minutes over low heat and without stirring so that the cream is well integrated until it thickens a little (it should not boil or it will cut).
4. Let the nougat cream cool completely before putting it in a container or tupper. We put all the mixture in the fridge. We must leave it there at least three hours before we start working with it.
5. If we make the ice cream with a refrigerator we have to leave the cream for several hours in the fridge and then we can keep it. To butter   is to turn the cream that we have into a kind of butter where we must break the possible ice crystals through movement and introduce air to the mixture, it is the most important step to achieve our goal: creamy ice cream. We introduce the air into the mixture either with the manual shake or with a refrigerator.
   • Manually:  When we make the ice cream without a refrigerator, my recommendation is to have the cream in the fridge for about three hours and then go to the freezer for another hour of rest, finally we will be another two and a half hours stirring the ice cream in the freezer every so often to break the crystallization. To remove it we take it out and transfer the cream to a metal bowl that we have previously had in the fridge, it must be very cold, and beat with some rods to avoid the formation of the crystals, since no matter how much fat the ice cream base has can be formed. During the first hour I recommend doing it every ten minutes, then every thirty minutes, and so on about three times. Then we definitely leave it in the freezer until the next day. And we will have our nougat ice cream.
   • With Refrigerator: This method is much easier, we take the cream from the fridge and go to the refrigerator that we will have had in the freezer for 24 hours, and we beat the cream with the spatula constantly (thus air enters the mixture, with making the crystals smaller and the mixture lighter). The process will take 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the quality of the refrigerator. Once we see that the cream begins to butter we add the pieces of nougat that we have reserved to create rich stumbles in the ice cream. If we see that it takes time to butter, the trick is to butter for 15 minutes, put everything in the freezer (ice cream cup) for another half hour, and repeat the process. Normally it happens because the refrigerator is not of quality, last year I had one of € 20 that has gone to the junk room. Once we have the butter mixture, we just have to put it in a tupper and freeze until the next day.

And here you have it, an aupa ice cream, for summer, Christmas, or whenever you want. You only have to save a few nougat tablets on Christmas dates and you will have ice cream all year.

Remember that we can prepare incredible home using simple products like ice cream base, milk, cream, sugar and eggs, and from these preparing almost any flavor ice cream, chocolate ice cream , vanilla ice cream , frozen yogurt ,. .. Imagination to the power.  Be sure to enjoy all the yummy sweets in our dessert recipes , I assure you that you will find a lot of ideas to make yours much happier.