Date & Pecan Ice Cream

A bit of rum was also involved.

Those of you who’ve been to Palm Springs will likely be familiar with the Date shake. I was first introduced to it—and to date ice cream—at this place Great Shakes (pictured above) while in Palm Springs for vacation a few years ago.¹ For the uninitiated, a Date shake usually consists of vanilla ice cream blended with dates and milk (though I suppose you could also use date ice cream). It’s a delightful treat, and if you haven’t had one, I highly recommend trying one out the next time the opportunity presents itself.

Those date shakes from Palm Springs were top of mind as I was planning what ice cream to make this week. I looked at a number of date ice cream recipes on the internet, especially the ones that don’t use any refined sugar and rely solely on the sweetness of the dates themselves. The no sugar recipes were appealing, but I ultimately decided to go with a Date, Rum, and Pecan recipe that’s included in David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop.

See that little bottle of rum there? I got it from the new Total Wine that opened up over in Emeryville.² I don’t really drink alcohol, but I must say, I was impressed by my first ever visit to Total Wine. It’s like the Costco of booze.

Anyway, the first step is to chop up the dates, and then combine them with a 1/4 cup of rum and bring it to a boil. Then you let them macerate for a few hours.

Next, you toast and chop some pecans.

I must admit that color wise, neither of these mix-ins look appealing. Luckily, it’s taste we’re after here.

Once the two mix-ins are prepped, you make the ice cream. It’s a simple custard recipe. Lebovitz says to use 6 egg yolks, but anytime I see a recipe calling for six egg yolks, it just seems like way too many. So I used five.

The assembly steps are as follows: heat the milk, sugar, and salt. Then slowly combine the heated milk with the egg yolks while whisking. Then return the whole mixture back to the stove and heat, while constantly stirring, until thickened.

Once the custard is ready, you strain it into the heavy cream and cool the bowl in an ice bath. The final step is to add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and 2 tablespoons of rum. I was feeling skittish, so I used only 1 tablespoon of the rum.

I put all of this together first thing in the morning, so I let it sit in the fridge for about 5 hours before churning it during my lunch hour.

Had the mix-ins ready to go.

I realize this photo is god awful. Should have chosen a different napkin, but this one was already on the kitchen table and within easy reach. I regret the stylistic error.

When the moment came to add the mix-ins, I added all of the dates, and most of the pecans:

And now, onto the final results.

I thought this came out really good, even if the date flavor wasn’t as noticeable as I would have wanted. The chewiness of the dates and crunchiness of the pecans worked well with the custard base. Not much rum flavor either, but again, I didn’t mind.

No one in my family, on the other hand, cared too much for it—complaints ranged from not liking the crunchiness of the pecans to the dates feeling mushy. As I’ve noted before on the blog: you can’t suit everyone tastes. So even though they didn’t like it, I’m still calling this one a success.

And that’s a wrap for this installment. I still plan on making Cherry Garcia, but I’m gonna wait another week for more cherries to come in at the supermarkets. See you then!

1. It’s an outstanding little spot, definitely in my all-time top 5 ice cream establishments. I still think about their Banana Caramel Graham shake anytime I get an ice cream craving (in other words, I think about it quite often).

2. While there, I ran into friend of the blog Andrew, and promised him a share of this week’s efforts!