Pumpkin & Chestnut Honey Ice-Cream Recipe
By Nicola Lando
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60 minutes prep time
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100 minutes cook time
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Difficult
This incredible recipe for pumpkin & chestnut ice-cream was inspired by a classic French dessert - pumpkin mousse, found in by Jean & Pierre Troisgros's 1970's book Nouvelle Cuisine. The chestnut honey brings more complexity of flavour, plus importantly, honey is an inverted sugar, which means it helps prevent crystals forming in ice-cream which affect its texture.
Each component of the recipe counts - the ice-cream holds deep rich malty flavours at the back of your mouth. The wafer adds additional sweetness and texture.
If you can get hold of one, try to find a 'culinary' pumpkin, rather than one sold for carving. Carving pumpkins tend to be excessively watery with less flavour. Otherwise, butternut squash, or even sweet potato are good alternatives.
Ingredients Serves: 6
- 600g pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and chopped into 2cm cubes (from roughly 1kg whole pumpkin)
- 50g butter
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp grated nutmeg
- 25g sugar
- 2 tbsp creme fraiche
For the ice-cream custard
- 600g double cream
- 150g milk
- 150g chestnut honey
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6 egg yolks
For the pumpkin seed wafer (adapted from Essence by David Everitt Matthias)
- 25g golden syrup
- 75g demerara sugar
- 25g milk
- 75g unsalted butter
- 25g pumpkin seeds, ground finely (prepare a little extra to garnish the dessert)
- 30g pumpkin seeds, roughly chopped
To serve
- Nut oil (hazelnut oil is good)
- pumpkin seeds, lightly toasted
Day before
- Start by making the pumpkin base. Place the pumpkin cubes into a saucepan and cover with cold water. Slowly bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until soft. Drain.
- Warm the butter in a large-bottomed pan over a very low heat, and add the drained pumpkin and mash roughly to make a thick puree. Add the salt and nutmeg. Keep over the low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring every so often to make sure it doesn't burn. This helps to dry out the pumpkin so the extra moisture doesn't dilute the ice-cream.
- Whilst the pumpkin dries slowly, move on to the custard. Heat the milk and double cream together in a saucepan over a medium heat until they come to the boil. Turn off the heat.
- Place the eggs, honey and vanilla paste in a large bowl, and whisk for 5 minutes, until thick, pale and creamy. With the whisk still running slowly pour over the hot milk and cream mixture. Pour back into the saucepan, and warm over a very low heat. Gently whisk by hand as the mixture thickens. It is best to check the temperature using a thermometer - stop when the mixture reaches 80°C. Over this, and the eggs might curdle. Set aside.
- When the pumpkin base is ready, remove from the heat, and press through a very fine sieve or chinois. This might feel like hard work, but it's worth it to make sure the ice-cream is super smooth. Stir in the sugar and creme fraiche.
- Slowly pour the custard over the pumpkin mixture and gently whisk to mix the two. Leave to cool. Then cover with cling film, pressing the cling film against the custard to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate overnight.
On the day of serving
- Churn the ice-cream in an ice-cream maker, and put in the freezer
- To make the wafer, heat your oven to 180C, and line two baking sheets with baking parchment. Pour the golden syrup and demerara sugar together into a small pan. Heat gently until the sugar crystals melt and start to bubble. Add the milk, and stir rapidly. Remove from heat. Add the butter and stir until melted, and stir in both the ground and chopped pumpkin seeds. Spread out over two baking sheets using a spatula. Cook for 8-10 minutes until golden brown. Leave to cool.
- Place the ice-cream in the fridge 20 minutes before eating. To serve, portion the ice-cream using a scoop, or slice with a hot knife. Sprinkle over ground pumpkin seeds, a drizzle of nut oil. Break off a piece of wafer to garnish.
About the author
Nicola is co-founder and CEO at Sous Chef. She has worked in food for over ten years.
Nicola first explored cooking as a career when training at Leiths, before spending the next decade in Finance. However... after a stage as a chef at a London Michelin-starred restaurant, Nicola saw the incredible ingredients available only to chefs. And wanted access to them herself. So Sous Chef was born.
Today, Nicola is ingredients buyer and a recipe writer at Sous Chef. She frequently travels internationally to food fairs, and to meet producers. Her cookbook library is vast, and her knowledge of the storecupboard is unrivalled. She tastes thousands of ingredients every year, to select only the best to stock at Sous Chef.
Nicola shares her knowledge of ingredients and writes recipes to showcase those products. Learning from Sous Chef's suppliers and her travels, Nicola writes many of the recipes on the Sous Chef website. Nicola's recipes are big on flavour, where the ingredients truly shine (although that's from someone who cooks for hours each day - so they're rarely tray-bakes!).
