{ Florean Fortescue’s Butterbeer Ice Cream }

I've been talking about it for months and months, I instaspammed you on instagram, and I even wrote up a long post about it. However, it may have skipped your notice that I was at THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER two weeks ago. Two weeks ago? It feels like FOREVER ago. Fo-evah. Sad panda.

While there, as I mentioned in my post, we went to Florean Fortesuce's Ice Cream Parlour.

It. was. delish. So, so good. The signature ice cream, of course, is Butterbeer. Of the four of us, do you know how many got Butterbeer flavor? Um. Zero. Perhaps because we'd already had Butterbeer to drink? I'm not sure, but we all opted for more unique (and ah-maze-ing) flavors. I had Stick Toffee Pudding, Darla had Salted Caramel Blondie, Bean got what Florean gave Harry- Strawberry Peanut Butter, and the girl got Chocolate Raspberry.

The HUGE hard packed scoops are 4.99 served in a cup or $5.99 in a waffle cone.

Other hard packed flavors include: Chocolate Chili, Apple Crumble, Vanilla, Chocolate, Clotted Cream, and Earl Gray and Lavender. They also have soft serves, which none of of tried, but the flavors are: banana, chocolate, granny smith, mint, pistachio, vanilla, orange marmalade, toffee, toffee apple, and strawberries and cream. You can also get the Eton Mess, which is a huge sundae in a souvenir glass!

Every one of us loved our ice cream. So, so good. I wish I had some now.

So, I made some. And so did Darla (more info below).

I, of course, made butterbeer.

To make it, I started with a custard based ice cream. I find them much creamier than recipes made without eggs.

I used a bottle of Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer (made by Reed's) for flavoring. If you can't locate this, use Darla's recipe to achieve a very similar taste.

I then reduced the butterscotch beer by 1/2. Reducing basically means cooking the water out. So, just add the soda (I'm from Ohio, man that word is hard to type. We call it POP here) to a pan. Over medium heat cook it, stirring often, until it's about 1/2 of what it started as.

After making the custard, I added this cooled (but not cold) syrup to it.

You know what else you can make?

Butterbeer Floats!

Can't you almost see Ron and Hermione sipping on one of these in The Three Broomsticks? Two straws, please!

I like to sprinkle my Butterbeer ice cream with a tiny bit of turbinado sugar for a pop of crunch! I'm sure it would be great with chocolate too, or many other toppings (although I think it stands great on it's own). It's still a very vanilla flavor with a hint of butterscotch. Apparently, unmistakably Butterbeer flavored too. I made Bean taste it and tell me what flavor it was. It took him a minute, but he got it right!

Making homemade ice cream is easy, and the bonus is that you know every ingredient that went into it. None of that weird xanthan gum or anything.

And the taste of homemade ice cream? Magical!

(I'm not even sorry for the pun.)

Want more? You know you do! Zip on over to Bakingdom to see Darla's recipe for Florean's Chocolate Chili ice cream. Spicy chocolate? Want.

Tina

See all of my Harry Potter posts here. Food, crafts, and 2 massive parties.




Butterbeer Ice Cream
by Tina @ Sugar Bean Bakers

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
⅔ cup sugar
⅛ teaspoon salt
6 large egg yolks
6 ounces of Butterbeer syrup (see above)- cooled to room temp
1 teaspoon imitation butter flavoring

In a small pan, simmer cream, milk, sugar and salt until sugar completely dissolves, approx 5 minutes. Remove from heat. In a separate bowl, whisk yolks together. While whisking constantly, slowly add about a third of the hot cream into the yolks. Whisk the yolk mixture back into the pan with the cream. Return pan to medium-low heat and cook, stirring often, until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (about 170 degrees).

Remove from heat, and carefully strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Cool mixture to room temperature. Whisk in the butterbeer syrup & butter flavoring. Cover and chill at least 4 hours or overnight.

Churn in an ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Directly from the machine will give you a soft serve consistency, or store in freezer until needed.

Yield: About 1 1/2 pints


Adapted from this recipe found in the New York Times