I was first introduced to the idea of corn in dessert in a corn custard recipe in Deborah Madison’s cookbook, Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets (my absolute favorite cookbook). It seems like a weird concept at first because we’re so trained to think of corn as part of a summer grilled meal or a salsa, but at the end of the day corn is, at its root, sweet. It’s much sweeter than some of the other savory ingredients that are fashionable to put in desserts these days. Like bacon. Or wasabi or whatever weird stuff Cupcake Wars and Sugar Rush are up to. Anyway, a few years ago I had corn ice cream for the first time in a dessert at Xochi, a Oaxacan restaurant in downtown Houston. I always call the dessert Elote Elote Elote, but the official menu name is “Helado de Elote: Corn custard ice cream, Texas Blue Corn Whiskey infused ice cream, corn cookie, blue corn atole cream.” I have dreams about this dessert (you can see a picture on the info page). So combining the basic corn custard recipe with the ice cream concept seems obvious. Especially since it’s around that time of year where corn is 10 cents an ear at HEB (limit 10 ears per customer, you know, to prevent corn hoarding). I eat the ice cream with berries but a whiskey caramel would be amazing as well. I just need to come up with a recipe for that.

Remember to put the bowl of your ice cream maker in the freezer the day before you want to make ice cream so it will be fully frozen. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you want to make ice cream and getting all the ingredients and then the bowl isn’t frozen. Actually a lot of things are worse. That’s a pretty minor problem in the grand scheme of things.

Makes a little more than 1 quart

Ingredients

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup whole milk

2/3 cup sugar

3/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 ears of corn

6 large egg yolks

Instructions

• Hold corn vertically in a bowl and use a knife to slice off the kernels. If you hold the corn in the bowl it’ll keep all of the corn in one place and keep the mess contained. Don’t discard the corn cobs, you’ll use them in the custard.

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• In a medium-large pot whisk together the heavy cream, whole milk, sugar, sea salt, vanilla and corn. Then add the corn cobs. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. While the milk mixture heats up separate your egg yolks and whisk them vigorously.
• When it reaches a simmer remove from heat and temper the eggs by whisking 1/3 of the milk mixture into the egg yolks before pouring the eggs into the milk and whisking thoroughly. Return to the heat and bring to 170 degrees over medium-low heat.
• Cool to room temperature with the corn still in the pot, then strain into a bowl and refrigerate for at least four hours.
• Discard the cobs but reserve the corn. I like to mix it with flour, eggs, salt and pepper and then fry it up into little corn fritters. Otherwise it’s a lot of food to waste.
• Churn your chilled custard in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer instructions, store in freezer.

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