Ingredients

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup Guinness stout
• ¼ cup molasses
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 whole star anise
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• ½ tsp red pepper flakes
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ cup chopped Gingersnap Cookies

Instructions

1. Fill a large bowl or pan with ice and water. Place a large, clean bowl in the ice bath. In a large, heavy-bottomed, nonreactive saucepan over medium heat, combine the cream, milk, and salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until hot but not boiling.
2. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until well blended.
3. Remove the cream mixture from the heat. Slowly pour about half of the hot cream mixture into the yolk mixture, whisking constantly. Transfer the yolk mixture back to the saucepan with the remaining cream mixture and return it to medium heat. Add the stout, molasses, vanilla, cinnamon sticks, star anise, peppercorns, and red pepper flakes. Cook, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula and being sure to scrape the bottom of the saucepan so it doesn’t scorch, until the liquid begins to steam and you can feel the spatula scrape against the bottom of the pan, 2 to 3 minutes.
4. Remove the custard from the heat and immediately pour it into the clean bowl you set up in the ice bath. Let cool, stirring occasionally.
5. When the custard has totally cooled, cover the bowl tightly and chill in the refrigerator overnight. When you are ready to freeze the custard, strain it into a bowl and stir in the ground ginger and cinnamon. (The ginger and cinnamon are added just before freezing, as they have a tendency to give milk and cream a slimy texture if allowed to sit too long.) Transfer the custard to an ice cream maker and spin according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Right after spinning, fold in the gingersnaps.
6. Eat immediately or freeze for up to 1 week.

Source: Godby, Jake; Vahey, Sean (2012-04-13). Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream Book (Kindle Locations 1878-1890). Chronicle Books LLC. Kindle Edition.

Notes

1. We use half of the ground ginger and ground cinnamon as we found it a little on the strong side.
2. Since the beer ice creams are all so high in alcohol (compared to other ice creams, that is), they probably won’t freeze completely in your ice cream machine—depending on what kind of machine you have, of course. Don’t fret; freeze as best you can in the machine and finish it off in the freezer. Transfer to an airtight container, cover, and freeze until it reaches the desired consistency.
3. We use a 1 ½ quart Cuisinart ice cream machine. This recipe creates too much ice cream for the machine to freeze in one process, so we need to split the freeze process into two separate sessions.

The Guinness Gingerbread Ice Cream being churned, almost ready to eat.