If you were an eagle-eyed reader, you might have spotted this week’s recipe test in with the loads of fruit in the Luau Wheelbarrow Ice Bar that I posted earlier this week. It was hiding out in a watermelon half.
This is Avocado Ice Cream!
AuthorRetroRuth
From How To Use Hawaiian Fruit, 1974
Submitted by reader ampersandwich
Tested Recipe!
[cooked-sharing]
Make a boiled custard with the milk, eggs and 1 cup of sugar. Remove from heat and add vanilla extract.
Mash the avocado with 1 cup of sugar and flavor with the almond extract.
When the custard is cool, add it to the mashed avocado mixture and freeze in your ice cream maker.
Serve in mounds with a green maraschino cherry on top of each mound.
Ingredients
Directions
Make a boiled custard with the milk, eggs and 1 cup of sugar. Remove from heat and add vanilla extract.
Mash the avocado with 1 cup of sugar and flavor with the almond extract.
When the custard is cool, add it to the mashed avocado mixture and freeze in your ice cream maker.
Serve in mounds with a green maraschino cherry on top of each mound.
Notes
This lovely recipe was submitted by ampersandwich from Instagram (Hello!). She saw how much fun I was having with Luau Week last week over on my Instagram account and she sent me a few recipes from her collection. This recipe is from How To Use Hawaiian Fruit (affiliate link). This one is fudging the date line a little bit, because this book was originally published in 1912 and then reissued in 1974. From the book:
How to Use Hawaiian Fruit was originally published in 1912 in Honolulu, where the author once owned a popular restaurant. Petroglyph Press added illustrations by William D. Brooks in 1974 and in 1999 reset the type and added a new cover design by Jan Moon, but kept the flavor of the original cookbook. Almost all of the recipes are very simple and call for basic ingredients. Note, with amusement, the recipe for Lomilomi Salmon on page 73 which calls for 5 cents onions and 5 cents tomatoes.
There was a great sadness in the kitchen when it was discovered that all the avocados I was peeling were not, in fact, for guacamole. Or even for TJ to stuff into his face just as they were. I tried to promise them that this would be better than guacamole, but I couldn’t get the words out.
The cooled custard being mixed into the mashed avocado.
If you are lusting after my mixing bowl, I have currently fallen in love with the retro look of the Zak Designs mint confetti melamine dishware. These bowls are currently sold out, but they have lots of other colors and they also have lots of other dishes in the mint line. (affiliate links) I’ve got my eye on the serving tray and the deviled egg plate. Hello. Also, dishwasher safe. I can’t tell you how great that is.
Success! It’s goo!
Just FYI – This made too much for my little ice cream maker, so I had to churn it in two batches. If you have a bigger ice cream maker, you should be able to churn it all at once.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the season for green maraschino cherries in the store, so we are going to have to settle for it crammed into a watermelon shell.
Here it is, melting in the sun.
And going into a skeptical mouth.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because this is actually pretty good.”
The Verdict: Good
From The Tasting Notes –
This ice cream was super, super smooth with only a hint of avocado, and that only came through at the very end. It was mostly creamy and sweet with an almond flavor. Overall, we all liked it, though I don’t know if it would be the best use of avocados, unless you are swimming in them. The consensus was that this was good, but we would rather have guacamole. Except for TJ who just wants to stuff them in his face plain.
I can imagine how smooth the avocado would make the ice cream. I like that it uses a cooked custard too, although I wonder how it would do with a more basic ice cream mix (translation: I’m lazy).
I think some of these recipes are the product of bumper crops of some sort of another — sort of like zucchini bread. We had friends with a huge and insanely prolific avocado tree. This recipe would have been perfect!
Thanks for the connection to Zak Designs. They’re going to get a lot of my money very shortly! 🙂
I live in the town where Petroglyph Press has its operations! They also have a bookstore called Basically Books. Aloooooooooha!
Also, they just moved to a bigger location. http://www.petroglyphpress.com/
Avocados are treated as dessert here in the Philippines. Besides ice cream (which is commercially made and available in grocery stores), they’re also eaten mashed with milk and sugar. I don’t think guacamole and sandwich-related applications like avocado toast have quite caught on here yet!
I have Zak bowls like that in brown from about ten years ago. Love them.
I think I would be tempted to add more flavors & ruin it completely.
If you don’t want to freeze ice cream, here’s a recipe for an avocado milkshake that is absolutely dreamy.
https://travelerslunchbox.com/2006/05/31/the-secret-life-of-avocados/