Adventures with the Ice Cream Maker: A St. Patrick's Day Treat

Hi all! I hope you had a wonderful Pi Day - I sure did. As per our annual tradition, Emily and I made Emily's foolproof pie, which was delicious as always, although I'd recommend adding some salt to the crust next time. Nevertheless, that pie is foolproof for sure.

Our pi(e) before it went in the oven

Tomorrow, as I'm sure you alcoholics out there know, is St. Patrick's Day. I spent last St. Patrick's Day in London, where they rather pointedly did not give a rat's ass, so it's nice to be back here in America (or more specifically, in college, where any excuse to drink becomes a major holiday). Wasn't it nice that we had this interfaith cooperation so that St. Patrick's Day and the Jewish drinking holiday, Purim, could be in the same glorious alcohol-poisoning-filled weekend? I thought so too.

Is there any point to this rambling? Why yes, dear reader, there is. But first, some additional rambling. When I was fifteen, a young Machoner at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, my age cohort went on a lot of trips, including to Canada. On our way up to the border we stopped in Vermont at the Ben and Jerry's factory. We took a tour of the factory and each bunk ate a Vermonster, which is 20 scoops of ice cream and all the toppings. On the tour we were permitted to sample some of the flavors the company was going to debut soon. One was some raspberry sorbet thing, which was fine but nothing special. But the other one was amazing, and has been my favorite Ben and Jerry's flavor ever since - Dublin Mudslide. Bailey's ice cream with chocolate chocolate chip cookie chunks and a coffee fudge ripple, is there anything more delightful? So for this St. Patrick's Day, I was inspired to try and recreate Dublin Mudslide ice cream.

For some reason there was no readily available guide on how to do this. I am such a pioneer. The first thing that I was worried about was the coffee fudge ripple. What does it meeeeeean? David Lebovitz to the rescue! Well, sort of. While searching for Bailey's ice cream recipes I came across his recipe for Irish Coffee ice cream. Bam. Problem mostly solved. I wasn't a huge fan of the first David Lebovitz coffee recipe -too strong - but since this one only involved steeping the beans and had no additional coffee added, it was a lot more palatable to me.

Next up, cookies! I made the tried-and-true Dorie Greenspan chocolate chip cookies, only with the cocoa powder substitution for some of the flour. I halved the recipe and only ended up using half of those again, which I crumbled and added to the churning mixture about five minutes from the end, but they're such delicious cookies that you won't mind having a few left over to eat plain.

Finally, the mysterious fudge ripple. Thank goodness for David Lebovitz, whose Perfect Scoop had a simple and delicious recipe. I didn't chill it for as long as I should have - in fact, I barely chilled it at all - but it still came out so professional-looking and, of course, tasty (though a bit more crystalline than I had hoped).

I wanted to buy a pint of Dublin Mudslide and do a taste test along with my homemade version, but I couldn't find any in my local grocery stores/minimarts. Can you believe it? What a travesty. But Dublin Mudslide had initially been released as a limited time only flavor - that would have REALLY been a travesty! So we have to be grateful for what we've got. In any case, this didn't really taste much like Dublin Mudslide, mostly because of the coffee flavor in the base. I couldn't taste the Bailey's at all, which is also the case for the original, so no big deal there. My favorite part was the chocolate chocolate chip cookie chunks. Regardless of its differences with the original, I think that this is an ice cream worth making in its own right. After all, it's less money and effort to just go to the store and buy a pint of Dublin Mudslide if that's really what you're after, but trust me, this confection won't let you down.

You can find the ice cream recipe here, the chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe here (take out 3/4 cups of flour and replace with 3/4 cups cocoa powder) and the fudge ripple recipe here. Happy St. Patrick's Day, see you on Friday for some Purim treats!