Photograph by fellow grad student Nhu:

Recently I tinkered around with making a pear ice cream for the annual lab pear contest among several third floor labs. It ended being closer to a sorbet due to how much I cut down on butterfat addition so that the pear flavors would shine through. I made some blackberry-pear sauce, pecan buttercrunch, and sticks of baked waffle cone batter to go along with it. This ice cream freezes a little harder than normal ice cream, so it needs a bit of extra time at room temp to reach a nice scoopable consistency.

Recipe for 1 quart of Pear Ice Cream ala Jules

My measurements switch from metric to american depending if I am weighing things or measuring them out in my american cups. This is just how I did it.

Mix the following:
• 800g pear puree

• roast ~ 10 pears packed in kosher salt
• 375F, 50 min
• cool, core and peel
• blend with 100g sugar + ~ 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• strain from a mesh sieve to reduce grittiness. This should yield around 1000g of puree

• 1 tsp vanilla extract (5 ml)
• 200g caramelized sugar

• I cooked this sugar with a little of the pear puree until it melted and caramelized a little, then mixed it back into the rest of the puree

• ¼ tsp salt (I used kosher salt)
• 60g nonfat dry milk
• 1 ½ cups whole milk (~350 ml)

Cover with saran wrap, and let everything meld overnight (mainly for the nonfat dry milk)

Churn in ice cream maker, or the old fashioned way.