For my birthday this year, I received a book called ‘Small Plates & Sweet Treats: My family’s journey to gluten-free cooking‘ by Aran Goyoaga, creator of cannelle et vanille. It all looks absolutely beautiful – so many recipes I want to try, but a recipe which caught my eye from the opening of the book was Roasted Pumpkin ice cream sundae.
I’ve invited friends around for dinner this evening, so thought it was the perfect time to give it a go. It’s turned out to be quite a good challenge in some respects, so I’ve shrunk the recipe to roasted pumpkin ice-cream with pecan shortbread. Stuff making more mess with caramel sauce and candied pecans, besides it’s sweet enough as it is, and because it’s January, we’re trying to avoid sugar – I’m making an exception for this one though.
Roasted Pumpkin Ice Cream
Ingredients
1 large sugar pumpkin, red kuri or butternut squash (1.25kg)
1 cup (250ml) double cream
1 cup (250ml) whole milk (I used soya)
3/4 cup (150g) light brown sugar
1 tsp finely grated root ginger
5 egg yolks
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp nutmeg
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C (gas 6). Peel, deseed and cut the squash into large chunks. Bake the squash on a baking sheet in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour, until the squash is cooked and the edges start to caramelise.
Once the squash is cooked, whiz in a food processor until smooth. You want one cup (250g) of roasted pumpkin purée The recipe suggests that one squash will yield 2 1/2 cups, but that seemed like a load of codswallop to me as I got a cup out of my squash.
Combine the double cream, milk, 1/2 cup (100g) of the light brown sugar and the ginger in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer over a medium heat.
Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together with the remaining 1/4 cup (50g) light brown sugar, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg until its frothy.
When the cream mixture reaches a simmer, pour it slowly into the egg mixture while whisking. Be careful not to scramble the eggs. Pour this back into the pan and cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, while it thickens to a custard-like consistency.
Remove the ice cream base from the heat and whisk in the pumpkin purée. Strain through a sieve into a clean bowl (I used the one I’d done the egg mix in – no point making MORE dishes). Cool and chill this mixture for at least two hours, or overnight.
The next morning, my mix was quite set – not the nice thick unctuous custard I’d hoped for, so I let the mix out with some more cream and milk until it was the consistency I wanted. This then got put in the ice cream maker to churn until frozen. I then turned it into a plastic container and it’s in the freezer ready to eat.
I’ll get it out of the freezer about an hour before eating and pop it in the fridge.
Pecan Shortbread
Ingredients
1 cup (240g) brown rice flour – I ended up using more than this, but I’ll come back to that!
1/2 cup (80g) potato flour
1/2 cup + 2Tbsp (70g) gluten free oat flour – I didn’t have oat flour, so weighed out that much of gluten free oats and whacked them in the food processor for a good spin.
1/4 cup (30g) tapioca flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup (80g) pecans
225g butter from fridge
3/4 cup (90g) icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method
Whiz the oats until fine (f using). Add the pecans and whiz again until the pecans are well chopped. Add the rest of the flours and salt and give it a good blend together. Add the butter, cubed, the icing sugar, and while the whiz is going, dribble in the vanilla.
Once it all comes together, turn it out into a bowl. You want a quite ‘short’ mixture. Mine felt too greasy so I added more rice flour until I was happy with the texture. Roll the mix into a nice sausage shape, wrapping in greaseproof baking paper to get it all nice and smooth and round.
Pop the whole roll in the fridge for at least an hour.
Preheat your oven to 180C (gas 4).
Take your shortbread sausage out of the fridge and cut into rounds, about 1 1/2 cm thick. Place these nicely spaced apart on greaseproof paper on a baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes. They need to be cooked all the way through, but not too browned otherwise they’ll get too dry. Leave them to cool and firm up on the tray, then dust with more icing sugar.
Wine Legs 