Food-o-File

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Ice Cream, Little Suzy, Ice Cream

When we were kids, the first singers my little sister ever liked were the Everly Brothers. She just knew their song "Wake Up Little Susie" was being sung only to her. Knowing they'd be performing in Austin on her recent milestone birthday, I did my best to get the Everlys to make a surprise appearance and sing it to her over lunch last week. The promotional opportunities inherent in the situation were obviously lost on the tour publicist, so Don and Phil were unavailable. But all the machinations involved in trying to pull off a birthday surprise reminded me of the summer after Mother died and how hard I tried to surprise Suzy with a batch of her personal favorite peppermint ice cream. Making ice cream is a time-honored tradition in our family. Both she and I have July birthdays, and we were always treated to a batch of our favorite flavor. If we had managed a summer trip to Austin, meandering through the Hill Country on our way home, my first choice was peach. Suzy inevitably chose peppermint, made from Mother's special recipe with the secret ingredient.

Once I settled in Austin, I bought a White Mountain freezer, and Frangelico Peach became my summer specialty. Suzy and Mother carried on the birthday tradition at home right up through the summer Mother passed away in 1995. Suzy's birthday falls near July 4, so she would usually spend the long weekend in Midland with Mother. Their ritual included watching the Miss Texas pageant (Mother had an uncanny ability to pick the winners) and making a freezer of ice cream. When Mother died, the freezer they had used naturally went to Suzy. The next summer, when I set out to surprise her, I discovered there was no written copy of the recipe. Having to confer with Suz about that was only one of the many snags in the surprise scenario that year. Mother's longtime caregiver, Lucy Villarreal, assured me the recipe was on a card in one of the little metal recipe boxes. It wasn't. Suzy suggested it might have come from Helen Corbitt's Cookbook (Houghton Mifflin, 1957), a treasure no Fifties Texas homemaker would have been without. The family cookbooks are now part of my professional library, so I checked Mother's well-used copy of the revered text and found the recipe that probably inspired her. Suzy was pretty sure about the amount of half-and-half, milk, and eggs. We would have to do some testing to figure out the right ratio of sugar and candy. Locating the candy was the next hurdle.

This particular ice cream is made with peppermint stick candy known as pure sugar sticks, the most common brand being Bobs Olde Timey Peppermint Candy Pure Sugar Sticks. The candy is made with sugar rather than corn syrup and has a porous texture with no shiny coating. Mother dissolved the sticks in half-and-half overnight, giving the finished product its pale pink color and refreshing taste. Small bags of this candy can be found everywhere, anywhere, during the December holiday season, but they are mighty scarce in July, let me tell you. We came to the conclusion that Mother must have had a secret source all those years or a well-hidden stockpile left over from Christmas. I called all over town, describing the candy to baffled grocery employees, generating vague, unsatisfying responses. As a last resort, I called Crestview MiniMax, famous far outside its neighborhood for scrupulous customer service, and the grocery manager knew exactly what I was talking about. He searched his storage room and found an old box with the company name and address. In no time, I was on the phone to Bobs Candies in Albany, Ga., requesting my own personal stash of sugar sticks from their mail-order division.

With candy in house and a reasonable approximation of the recipe, I got out my trusty White Mountain and went to work. Since I intended to print the recipe, I knew I'd have to heat the egg custard to at least 165 degrees to kill any possible salmonella bacteria, although we never did it that way growing up, and Suzy still doesn't. Cooking the custard isn't really difficult, but it's necessary to watch the heat so the eggs don't curdle, and then the custard has to cool completely before you can make ice cream. The first batch wasn't sweet enough to suit me, and the second batch made our teeth ache. We finally settled on the version below. It's a lovely delicate pink concoction, delightfully refreshing on a hot summer day. Happy Birthday, Little Suzy.

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My Sister's Peppermint Ice Cream

16 ounces Bobs Olde Timey Peppermint Candy Pure Sugar Sticks

1 1/2 quarts half-and-half

4 whole eggs

1 cup sugar

2 cups milk

The day before you make ice cream, put the candy and half-and-half in a nonreactive container. Cover and refrigerate overnight to allow candy to dissolve. The next day, whisk together the eggs and sugar and set aside. In a heavy 2-quart saucepan over medium-high heat, heat the milk until hot to the touch. Remove about 1/2 cup of the hot milk, and whisking as you pour, add the hot milk to the egg/sugar mixture to temper the eggs. Again, whisking as you pour, add the warmed egg/sugar mixture to the milk in the saucepan. Cook over medium heat until mixture thickens, stirring regularly, being careful not to curdle the eggs by heating too fast. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl and cool completely. Whisk the cold custard into the cold candy/half-and-half, pour into the canister of a 1-gallon ice cream maker, and process according to manufacturers' directions. Makes about 3 quarts. For the candy: Bobs Candies, PO Box 3170, Albany, GA 31706; 800/569-4033; www.bobscandies.com.

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Frangelico Peach Ice Cream

7 large, ripe peaches, peeled and diced

3 tablespoons Frangelico hazelnut liqueur* (you can substitute Amaretto or dark rum)

3 eggs

1 3/4 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups milk

2 cups heavy cream

Combine the peaches and the liqueur in a nonreactive bowl, cover, and refrigerate for at least four hours or overnight. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs until thick, and then add sugar, beating to dissolve. Set aside. In a heavy 2-quart saucepan, heat the milk over medium heat until hot to the touch. Remove 1/2 cup of the hot milk, and, whisking while you pour, add it to the egg/sugar mixture to temper the eggs. Once again whisking as you pour, add the egg mixture to the milk in the saucepan and whisk gently until the mixture begins to thicken. Heat the mixture carefully and slowly so as not to curdle the eggs. Strain the custard through a fine sieve into a bowl and cool completely. When the custard is cold, combine with the peach mixture and the heavy cream. Pour mixture into the canister of a 1-gallon ice cream freezer and process according to manufacturers' directions. Makes about 3 quarts.

*The alcohol in the liqueur will keep the peaches from freezing too hard, and Frangelico has a marvelous affinity for peaches.