Pumpkin and Gingerbread Ice Cream Sandwiches

Since I was gone for practically three weeks, I have not been thinking about the upcoming holidays. It suddenly hit me when we went over to a friend’s house for dinner and their entire house was beautifully decorated with autumn motifs. Halloween is around the corner (still don’t know if our little boy will end up wearing the costume we got him) and Thanksgiving and Christmas follow soon after.

Although I grew up eating lots of winter squash, I had never really had it as an ingredient in a dessert until I came to the US and tasted pumpkin pie. I immediately fell in love and to this day, pumpkin pie is my favorite part of the American holidays.

As you might have noticed, I love ice cream and particularly ice cream sandwiches. The weather is still warm enough to be enjoying ice cream outside.

We got some great looking pumpkins the other day, which I roasted. I used some of that flesh for this ice cream and froze the rest. I found that the flesh was a bit more watery than the regular canned pumpkin puree, but it tasted excellent. We also roasted the pumpkin seeds and ate them right out of the oven with a bit of sea salt. Deliciousness.

Gingerbread Sugar Cookies

250 grams butter
125 grams powdered sugar
1 egg
370 grams flour
3 grams salt
2 grams baking powder
3 grams ground ginger
2 grams ground cloves
1 gram ground cinnamon
Egg wash
Sanding sugar

Cream the butter and the powdered sugar with the paddle attachment. Scrape the bowl and add the egg. Mix until combined. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder and spices and add to the mixing bowl. Mix until combined.

Turn the dough on to your work surface and shape it into a disk. Wrap it in plastic wrap and flatten it some more. Refrigerate overnight.

Remove dough from refrigerator and roll to 1/8″ thickness. Cut with a square cookie cutter that is about 3″ and place them on a sheetpan lined with a silicon mat or a piece of parchment paper. Brush the tops of the cookies with egg wash and sprinkle sanding sugar on top. Bake at 350F for about 8 minutes. Let the cookies cool before assembling the ice cream sandwiches.

Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream

450 grams whole milk
100 grams heavy cream
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
170 grams sugar
70 grams egg yolks
200 grams fresh pumpkin puree

Cut a medium size pumpkin in half. Place on a sheetpan cut side down and bake at 375F for about 30 minutes or until flesh soft and scoopable. Measure 200 grams of the pumpkin flesh, puree and set aside.

In a medium saucepan, heat the milk, heavy cream, half of the sugar and the spices. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and the rest of the sugar. When the milk mixture comes to a boil, temper into the egg yolks and whisk. Return this base to the pan and cook to 82C or until it coats the back of a wooden spoon.

Strain this custard through a fine sieve into a clean bowl. Mix the pumpkin puree into it and place the bowl over an ice bath to cool it quickly. Let the ice cream base rest in the refrigerator overnight.

Churn in ice cream machine and when done, pour into a frozen quarter sheetpan. Freeze until solid.

Cut ice cream with the same size square cookie cutter used to cut the gingerbread sugar cookies. Place the ice cream squares between cookies and serve,