Aaaand we’re back.1
I was thinking my hiatus would last longer than two weeks. But then I got it into my head to do an ube ice cream comparison: a custard version vs. an eggless version. Part of my motivation for this was wanting to use up some of the ube halaya that’s been sitting in my fridge since November (when I last made a batch of ube ice cream). Another part came from the desire to outdo the very underwhelming pint of Ube Ice Cream I recently sampled from Trader Joe’s. But mostly, it was about the eggs.
Looking back over the past year, I noticed that a number of my favorite batches—Cherry Garcia, Peach Ice Cream, Mint Brownie—were custard based recipes. At the same time, two of the more notable ice cream makers working in America today—Jeni Britton and Tyler Malek—both insist on not using eggs in their ice creams because they believe it messes with the flavor of the final product.
I’m not here to settle any debates between custard and non-custard partisans. I’m simply curious to see if I can notice the egg flavor, as it’s not something I’ve really noted in any ice cream I’ve tasted up until this point.
So I’ll essentially be making two identical ice creams this week. The first will be the NY Times custard recipe courtesy of Melissa Clark. The second will be Jeni’s standard ice cream base, which uses cream cheese and corn starch as stabilizers. Both batches will have the exact same amount of ube halaya and ube extract—I’m using the proportions from Adrienne Borlongon’s Ube Malted Crunch, which is featured her book, The World of Ice Cream2. Don’t expect anything too scientific beyond that. We’re just gonna make both and see what the results are. I’m sharing the finished product with two different families, so the head to head comparison will happen solely in my household. Let’s get to it!
Ube Frozen Custard
I started out my making the custard version, and for once, I’m following the recipe exactly by using the full complement of eggs. No egg left behind!
I’ve covered the custard making process fairly extensively at this point, so I’ll simply say that it all came together quite smoothly. If nothing else, the past year has made me comfortable with making an ice cream custard.
After it cooled in the ice bath, I added the ube extract and then ran it through the immersion blender.
After that, it went into the fridge to chill for about 8 hours.
Ube Ice Cream
Next up was Jeni’s base. I briefly thought about doing a simple Philly style ice cream, but that didn’t seem like a worthy competitor for a frozen custard. Jeni’s strikes me as the best non-egg ice cream base out there, and so it felt like a good fit for this little exercise.
First up, I had to measure out the corn starch and add 1/4 cup of the milk to it.
After that, I added everything except the corn starch and cream cheese to the pot and brought it to a boil. Then I added the corn starch slurry, heated the mixture until it thickened, and then slowly incorporated it into the cream cheese so it was silky smooth. I didn’t get any photos of adding the corn starch or incorporating the hot mixture into the cream cheese.
The last step was blending it using the immersion blender.
Then it went into the fridge to chill for about 7-8 hours.
The Churn
Here are the two batches just before churning. That’s Melissa Clark’s custard on the right and Jeni’s on the left.
As you can see, the vibrancy of the purple color in the Melissa Clark recipe was a bit diluted by the yellow of the egg yolks. The Jeni’s, on the other hand, achieved a technicolor level of purple.
Here’s the custard churning:
And here’s the Jeni’s batch churning:
That video really shows the vibrancy of the purple color.
Onto the final results!
Taste Comparison
Both batches had excellent texture and scooped up very easily (more on that in a moment).
After hardening overnight, the Jeni’s batch was only slightly more vibrant than the Melissa Clark batch.
We had the kids do a blind taste test with a focus on two questions: (1) could they taste the eggs? and (2) which one tasted better?
With respect to question 1, they both chose Jeni’s as the one with eggs. So there’s that! Regarding the second question, our son chose Jeni’s as his preferred batch, while our daughter chose the Melissa Clark custard as her preferred. So the results were inconclusive on that front as well.
After sampling both myself, what I would say is that texture wise, the custard was denser and creamier than the Jeni’s (in a good way) while the Jeni’s was lighter and had a smoother finish than the custard (again in a good way). Both recipes yielded excellent ice creams, so in my mind, it’s really a matter of personal preference versus one being better than the other. Bottom line: on texture it was pretty much a draw.
As far as the taste, the difference was again pretty negligible. Both had a prominent and delicious ube flavor, so I wouldn’t say one emerged as a clear winner in that regard either.
But what about the taste of the eggs you ask!
What I would say to that is that after multiple samples of each, you can taste the eggs in the custard batch. But it is very subtle, and I felt like I kind of had to search for it underneath the ube flavor. Now perhaps because ube—via the ube extract—has such a prominent flavor, I would have noticed the egg flavor more in an ice cream flavor built around a less punchy flavor, such as a fresh fruit like strawberry or peach. But I don’t know.3
Either way, I kind of like the saltiness that the egg brings to the overall flavor. And the Jeni’s recipe provides a similar background saltiness via the cream cheese. So the “egg takeaway,” for me at least, is that concerns about them interfering with the flavor feels more like a brand marketing strategy for Jeni’s and Salt & Straw than a true taste concern.4 But I’m just a rando with a Substack blog, so what do I know.
Overall, both of these base recipes are excellent (quite possibly my two favorite from the past year), and having two batches of ube to eat has been a lovely treat for the second week of the new school year.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back sometime soon with a new post. I’m not sure when, but soon. I’m also thinking of doing request batches for families in the East Bay (which I may or may not blog about). If you live in Oakland or Berkeley, you may hear from me in the next week or two.
Until then, happy ice cream eating!
To be clear, this post has nothing to do with the popular Grimace milkshake that came out from McDonald’s a few years ago. I just liked the color symmetry. And the fact that Grimace likes milkshakes.
I’ve criminally underutilized The World of Ice Cream since purchasing it, but hope to remedy that oversight this upcoming year.
Maybe I’ll do another comparison with a mellower flavor to find out!
As someone who makes ice cream purely at home, perhaps I’m unqualified to make this claim. And I have no doubt that both Jeni and Tyler Malek of Salt & Straw truly believe that eggs negatively impact the flavor of ice cream. But I would note that both Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs use egg yolks in their ice creams and that decision has not seemed to detract from the taste of their products.