whine & dine

Whenever bunny and I are in Pacific Place and have some time to kill, we inadvertently end up wandering around great. This time, I found a whole stash of interesting looking honeys in one of the aisles, and decided to buy a tub of heather honey to try it. Now, I’m not a huge fan of honey, served neat. I don’t like it spread on toast, and I don’t really like it as much as I like maple syrup (I know, I’m a heathen..), but I do enjoy its flavour in other stuff, like honey baked into banana bread, or that all time sore-throat soother, honey stirred into hot water with lemon.

I’ve also been having a little bit of a scratchy throat, so I figured if I made some ice cream (which is fine for sore throats, just not coughs – before I get scolded by anyone), I could flavour and sweeten it with honey and that should work just as well as drinking honey water! So I whipped up a very simple Philadelphia-stype ice cream base, but used honey in place of the usual sugar. I decided against using a custard base because I didn’t want anything to overpower the delicate flavour of the honey, excepting a touch of vanilla to marry the flavours together.

Anyway, it’s super easy to make, and pretty darned tasty – it tasted like Honey Stars! I’m quite pleased with my recent successes in the ice cream frontier. Hopefully I’ll have time for a couple of batches yet before the weather turns too cold for me to churn anymore batches.

Honey Ice Cream

400ml whipping cream
200ml full cream milk
1/3 cup aromatic honey, such as heather honey
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
pinch of salt

Combine all the ingredients in a heavy-based saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook gently, stirring often to dissolve the honey, until just below boiling point. Remove from the heat, and set aside, covered, to steep for 1 hour at room temperature.

Strain the cream into another container, discarding the vanilla pod. Chill, covered, at least 8 hours or overnight, then churn in your ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions.