Grapefruit Buttermilk Ice Cream with Lemon Cookie Chunks

This recipe was inspired by my daughter's love for floral, tart grapefruit. Its a perfect combination for sweet and creamy ice cream because it perfumes the vanilla custard beautifully. Your taste buds are in for a treat, it hits every note; sweet, bitter, tart and floral. The ice cream base is a combination of grass-fed sweet cream and tart buttermilk. The combination makes for a creamy yet tart ice cream that pulls out the tangy quality of the grapefruit nicely. The lemon cookies I used are made in Vermont, at the Vermont Country Store, Orton Brothers Lemon Button Cookies. They are crunchy, tangy and slightly salty, which is a perfect combination for this ice cream. Every pocket of them in the ice cream gives you the feeling of eating the most delicious citrus pie, almost like having a pie crust sprinkled throughout! Because I used real grapefruit juice instead of an extract, the ice cream is a little icy in texture. I wanted to use real, whole ingredients and not substitute extract or grapefruit oil for the flavor. I happen to really love the texture but if you want a creamier base then omit the grapefruit juice, bump up the liquid with heavy cream or half and half and use grapefruit extract instead.

This recipe makes a little over 1 quart of ice cream.

Ingredients


2 Cups grass-fed heavy cream
1 Cup grass-fed buttermilk, its hard to find, I suggest asking a local farm for it, store bought buttermilk is fine.
1 Cup fair trade, organic, raw cane sugar
1 Vanilla bean, seeds scraped.
Zest from one organic grapefruit, about 2 Tbsp.
3/4 Cup fresh squeezed organic grapefruit juice, about 2 grapefruits.
3 Whole farm raised eggs
1 Cup Orton Brothers Lemon Button Cookies, crushed. *See end note.

Directions

In a sauce pan, over medium high heat whisk the heavy cream, sugar, vanilla seeds, zest, juice and eggs. Stirring constantly, cook till it comes to a simmer, DO NOT BOIL. Remove from heat and strain over a fine mesh sieve into a large mixing bowl. Refrigerate till cold, about 2 hours.

When the mixture is cold whisk in cold buttermilk and pour the mixture immediately into an ice cream machine. Churn using the manufacture's instructions (do not add the cookies into the machine).

When the ice cream is done churning pour the mixture into an air tight container and fold in the crushed cookies, mixing just to combine. Place the air tight container into a freezer and freeze for at least 2-3 hours.

To serve scoop the ice cream into serving dishes and sprinkle with more crushed cookies, or garnish with whole cookies, enjoy!

*Note: The Orton Brothers cookies might be hard to find if you do not live on the East Coast, you can order them online by clicking on my link or you can substitute homemade lemon cookies, made by a fellow blogger, that taste almost identical, get the recipe here: http://www.crunchycreamysweet.com/2013/03/07/lemon-burst-cookies-from-scratch/.

I am not a wonderful baker so I opted for the wonderful store bought ones that are made with all natural ingredients. :)