Let Them Eat Healthy: Grilled Pineapple Ice Cream with Brown Butter Rum Swirl

This ice cream was inspired by two things, my friends telling me that they would love a pineapple ice cream and my love for the sauce on bananas foster. If you have never had bananas foster, its a brown sugar rum sauce that the bananas are cooked in and its sweet and decadent and maybe the most incredible sauce on the planet. Though bananas are traditional, I think it goes wonderfully with any tropical fruit; boy was I right on when I swirled it into my creamy pineapple ice cream! I started with a vanilla custard base and then mixed in sweet grilled pineapple puree, right at the end. Grilling them caramelizes their natural sugars making them even sweeter and giving them a slightly smoky flavor. I then layered this with the brown butter rum sauce was a match made in ice cream heaven. The pineapples were sweet and slightly smoky and the sauce was salty and decadent, all the flavors I absolutely love in a dessert. I am not a straight up sweet dessert eater, I like something with a bit of personality. I am known to mix herbs or spices into desserts just to bump up the interesting factor and make your guests ask, "what is that incredible flavor?"

This recipe makes 1 quart of ice cream.
Adapted from the vanilla ice cream recipe of David Lebovitz, found here.

Ingredients

Ice Cream

1 Cup grilled pineapple, completely cooled, this is about half a fresh pineapple.*
1 Cup grass-fed whole milk
Pinch of sea salt

Heaping 1/2 cup fair trade, organic, raw cane sugar
1 Vanilla bean, slit and seeds scraped.
2 Cups grass-fed heavy cream
5 local, farm raised egg yolks, I save the whites for frittatas.

Swirl

4 Tbsp grass-fed butter
1/4 Cup fair trade, organic, dark brown sugar
1/4 Cup pineapple juice
1/4 Cup dark rum, I use Kraken.
2 Tbsp arrowroot
Pinch of sea salt

Directions

Heat milk, salt, sugar, vanilla beans and pod in a sauce pan over medium heat. Heat till just starting to simmer, remove from heat, cover with a lid and infuse for one hour.

After your grilled pineapple has cooled, puree it in a food processor till it is smooth. You only need 1/2 a cup of puree for the recipe, just save any leftover to put over top of the finished ice cream, or for another recipe.

Make an ice bath by filling a large bowl with water and ice. Place a smaller bowl over this and then a strainer. Put the heavy cream and pineapple puree into the smaller bowl.

In another bowl place the egg yolks. Heat up your steeping milk again, just till steaming and ladle a small amount of this milk into your yolks to temper them. Pour this mixture back into the pan with the leftover milk and cook on medium heat, stirring constantly, till the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Strain through the sieve over the heavy cream and pineapple puree mixture, whisk till combine and cooled, about 3 minutes. Place in the fridge, preferably overnight. If you do not want to wait 24 hours place the mixture into a Ziploc bag and submerge in ice water for an hour.

To make the brown butter rum sauce, place butter in a small sauce pan. Cook over medium high heat till it browns, about 5 to 6 minutes. Keep an eye on it, the milk solids (the white frothy stuff) can go from brown to burned very quickly. Once it has browned and starts to smell nutty add in the rum carefully and cook for a minute. Add in the pineapple juice, sugar and salt, stir to combine and cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat and add in the arrowroot stir to combine, you will notice it start to thicken, it will thicken more upon standing. Place in the fridge to cool, preferably overnight. Again mixture can be cooled in a Ziploc in an ice bath, but mixture must be cold.

Remove the vanilla bean and churn the custard base in an ice cream maker based on your manufacturer's instructions. Mine gets churned till it looks like mashed potatoes. Fold in the pineapple chunks. Layer the swirl by placing 1/4 of the ice cream in a glass baking dish that has a lid, the more surface area the better. Then spread some of the rum sauce over this and keep repeating with 1/4 ice cream till its all layered. Place a piece of wax paper over the top and your lid and place in a freezer for at least 3 hours.

To serve, scoop out into serving dishes and top with more grilled pineapple or a sprinkle of finishing salt, I have a smoked guava salt that goes wonderfully over top!

*To grill pineapple: butter a grill pan and slice a fresh pineapple in thick slices, they will hold together during the high heat grill process. Grill pineapple on each side till charred, about 4 minutes a side. It reduces the water content of the fruit and caramelizes the natural sugars making it sweeter.