Binging with Babish: Ice Cream Flavors from Avengers: Infinity War

- We swore an oath to protect the Time Stone with our lives. - And I gave up dairy, but Ben and Jerry named a flavor after me, so... - 'Stark Raving Hazelnuts.' - Nothing bad. - A little chalky. - A Hunk-a Hulk-a Burning Fudge is our favorite. - Is that a thing? Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to Binging with Babish, where this week we'll be taking a look at those non-existent Ben & Jerry's

flavors

, namely Stark Raving Hazelnuts, Hunk-a Hulk-a Burning Fudge, and because I like to do things in threes... I'm stealing this idea from redditor dctctx.

I'm going to try the brilliantly named Raspberry Thorbet. First we have to negotiate some hazelnuts. Ideally, you want to buy hazelnuts that are already blanched and peeled, but if you're like me and didn't, you can blanch them for 3 minutes in a mixture of 2 cups of water and 3 tablespoons of baking soda. . This will turn the water black, but don't be alarmed, that's natural, then we'll just drain them and submerge them in an ice water bath. And now the skins should be very easy to remove: just rub them between your fingertips and they should come off immediately. Go ahead and drain them on a few paper towels, all the while thinking out loud why they would sell hazelnuts with the skin on.

Pat them dry, roast them in a 350°F oven for 5 to 7 minutes, and then it's time to confit them. In a pan goes 3/4 cup of sugar, along with 3 tablespoons of water and a pinch of salt that we are going to bring to a boil over medium heat, and keep stirring, keep turning until it is a light golden amber color, at which point the one where we're going to pour in our toasted hazelnuts (making sure each nut is individually coated with sugar) and then pour them onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, before separating them tightly- uh, with forks.

Then, once there are no nuts on top of each other, we will let it cool for about 15 minutes until it has hardened and we have a kind of brittle hazelnut that we can then break into individual nuts. And as you've probably guessed, this will be the filling for our Stark Raving Hazelnuts, which Doctor Strange described as "a little chalky," which tells me it was probably frozen yogurt. This is by far the easiest to make at home: We start by combining 24 ounces of strained Greek yogurt, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup sifted cocoa powder, and 1 cup ground sugar. skimmed milk, also for flavor a pinch of salt, a splash of vanilla extract and a small shake of instant coffee.

Then we are going to beat it all together, preferably in a bowl larger than this, until it is completely homogeneous. And then we're just going to cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours, it's very important to have an extremely cold base when making any type of ice

cream

. In the past I have shown how to make ice

cream

using tricks and hacks. If you want to see them, click the link in the top right corner right now, but since we're trying to recreate Ben & Jerry's here, I guess I'll use a machine. So I'm going to blend our yogurt for about 25 minutes, adding the candied hazelnuts in the last 5 minutes.

The next step is to recreate the Ben & Jerry's pint artwork, which I think I did perfectly, and then place our whipped yogurt, which should be the consistency of a very thick smoothie, into our container and then freeze it for a minimum of 2 hours. Which is perfect because we have other ice creams to make. How about we do Hunk-a Hulk-a Burning Fudge next? For this one, I'm going to make pure ice cream, so first we have to make a more traditional custard. In a large saucepan goes: 1 and 1/2 half cups of heavy cream, 1 and 1/2 cups of milk, 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/3 cup of light corn syrup.

We bring this mixture to 175°F, whisking constantly, before introducing it to 5 beaten egg yolks along with 2 tablespoons of white sugar. And now we have to start a process known as tempering, which involves slowly heating the eggs by taking a cup of our heavy cream mixture and pouring them in as slowly as possible while whisking constantly. This will temper our eggs so they don't scramble when we put them back in the saucepan. And bring this mixture to 185 °F, continuing to whisk constantly, but not before adding 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder. I'll also add some instant coffee shake back in;

This won't make it taste like coffee, it will just increase the chocolate flavor. A pinch of salt and a splash of vanilla will do too. 185°F, so we're going to kill the heat and then add 3 ounces of unsweetened chocolate, chopped into small pieces so the residual heat from our custard can melt it into the mixture. Now let's take advantage of the rare opportunity to try a hot ice cream that tastes exactly as you imagine: very good, but very strange. And once we have let it cool at room temperature for about 20 minutes, we cover it and put it in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours, more than enough time for our fudge to swirl.

In a small saucepan, put 2/3 cup of milk, along with 1 and 1/4 cups of granulated sugar and a pinch of salt. Whisk this until combined and barely boiling, at which point we will add 1/3 cup of cocoa powder. Whisk until combined, turn off the heat, and then add back in 3 ounces of unsweetened chocolate, which we'll cover with the wrong size pan lid and let melt for 3 minutes. Once the time has elapsed, finally add: 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter until completely incorporated. And we need to let it cool completely to room temperature because we don't want anything to melt our ice cream when it comes out of the machine.

Speaking of which, let's get that chocolate base out of the refrigerator and into the ice cream maker. Then churn for 20 to 30 minutes until it turns lighter in color and resembles soft serve ice cream. This time I'm not going to add the ingredients into the machine because we want a fudge swirl. So I'm going to place all the ice cream in a loaf pan, drizzle it generously with our fudge sauce, and top with chocolate chunks, or rather, chunks. Then we'll just gently fold it in, until we have a nice swirl of fudge and all the pieces are evenly dispersed throughout the ice cream.

And then pour it into another beautifully designed Ben & Jerry's pint container. Also, this type needs at least 2 hours, if not 4 hours, in the freezer before consuming, which gives us some time to prepare our Raspberry Thorbet. First, we need to make a pectin solution: We combine 1 cup of water, a pinch of salt, and 1 teaspoon of Sure-Jell pectin, which we will bring to a simmer, whisking constantly with a small whisk until the pectin has melted and the mixture It is homogeneous. Then we will set it aside to cool to room temperature, approximately 20 minutes. Next, put 20 ounces of fresh raspberries, not fresh raspberry leaves, into a food processor, plus 2/3 cup granulated sugar and our cooled pectin mixture.

Pectin isn't necessary, but apparently it will help improve the texture of our sorbet, according to the knowledgeable folks at America's Test Kitchen. We are now processing this for 30 seconds until it is completely smooth, except for the seeds and pulp, which we are now going to laboriously strain using a spoon and eventually a soup ladle, pressing all the liquid out of the solids until we have nothing left. more than seeds. Now another thing we are going to do to try to improve the texture of our sorbet is to freeze 1 cup of this mixture while we chill the rest for the required 8 hours.

Apparently this will seed our sorbet with ice crystals that will make it freeze faster and end up less icy. So we're going to remove our chunk of future frozen ice cream and add it to our cold product (a potato masher worked very, very well for me). Then, once it's completely smooth, we pour it into our machine and blend for 15 to 25 minutes. minutes. One last moment of admiration for the pure artistry that went into making these containers, and then we filled them with Thorbet and froze them again for at least 2 hours before consuming them. And after so many hours of waiting, it's finally time for the taste test.

Stark Raving Hazelnuts was pretty good, but it was actually chalky; I hope to try to improve it when I make froyo from The Good Place. Raspberry Thorbet was very good, but it's not exactly raspberry season, so the flavor will definitely improve later in the year, but Hunk-a Hulk-a Burning Fudge is my masterpiece: it's rich, creamy and crazy. chocolatey And it's easy to do; You could even say that it is... very simple.