Sweet Childhood Memories Of Mine - Pandan Ice Cream Wafer

Pandan Ice Cream Wafer

I have only ever attempt to make ice cream once so this is a kind of a challenge for me. So why did I gave myself this challenge? Well, It all started off when I saw the bloggers scream for ice cream challenge set up by the lovely kavey eats. This month's theme is to re-create a childhood ice cream flavour or experience. How apt is that, considering my recent nostalgic trip down memory lane with the Hainanese chicken rice, chicken satay, Southeast Asian street snacks etc. I knew immediately what I was going to make........this!

This might not look much to most of you, but to me, it held lots of wonderful sweet childhood memories. I grew up in Singapore and Malaysia. When I was young, there used to be a mobile ice cream vendor who would whizzed through the village at around 6 o'clock, the familiar ice cream bell would filled the air. Upon hearing this, all the kids would rushed out with their leftover pocket money for the day and forked out around 20 cents, roughly 4 pence, for a yummy treat. The ice cream man will be on a scooter and on the back of the scooter would be an attached ice compartment where all the delicious cold treats are stored. My favourite is the ice cream wafer, which is basically a rectangular block of ice cream sandwiched between two crispy wafer biscuits.

I have decided to make a pandan flavoured ice cream. This fragrant southeast Asian leaves are mainly used for baking, although it can also be sometimes use for savoury dishes. My first attempt at these went horribly wrong. Being not a huge fan of artificial colouring, I wanted to figure out a way out to extract the green colour from the pandan leaves rather than using the readily available pandan paste which contains green colouring. So I thought I would blitzed up some of the leaves together with a dash of the cream, completely forgetting what will happen to an over-whipped cream....yes, you've guessed it. It became freshly churned pandan butter, not quite right. Having to chuck these away and start again (thank goodness I've bought a big packet of pandan leaves), I decided to blitz them again but with milk this time round, it worked, hurrah!

So here it is, this is how I made my delicious, pandan ice cream wafer. Machine free.

(Serves 4)
Ingredients


For the ice cream:

450ml double cream
150ml full-fat milk
20 fresh pandan/screwpine leaves (substitute with 2 tsp pandan extract/paste if not available)
6 free range egg yolks
6 tbsp maple syrup


For the pastry stacks:
100g unsalted butter, melted
50g icing sugar
4 sheets Filo pastry
Method


Cut 12 pandan leaves into small pieces and blitz into a green paste in a food processor along with the milk. Tied the remaining pandan leaves into knots for easy retrieve.

Strain using a sieve and press on the paste with a spoon or spatula to get as much liquid as possible. Put the cream, strained milk and the knotted pandan leaves in a pan and bring to just below the boil. Remove from the heat and allows to cool slightly.

Whisk the egg yolks and maple syrups together, then slowly pour on the warm liquid, whisking constantly. 

Pour the mixture back into the pan and cook gently, stirring constantly, until thickened slightly and coat the back of a spoon. Do not allow it to come to a boil or it will curdle. Pour into a jug and set aside to cool. Cover with a cling film to stop skin from forming as it cool.

Pour the cold mixture into a freezeproof container and pop into the freezer for 1 1/2 hours, until slightly mushy. Whisk to break up the ice crystal. Return to the freezer and repeat this process twice.

For the filo pastry stacks. Lay a sheet of filo pastry onto a work surface. Brush with the melted butter and dust with some icing sugar with a sieve. Layered with another sheet of pastry and repeat until all pastry has been used up. Brush the top with just the butter. Cut into eight 10 x 5cm rectangles. Place into a baking tray lined with lightly greased baking paper. Bake in the oven for 2 minutes until crisp and golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

 To serve, place a filo stack on a plate. Cut the ice cream into roughly 10 x 5 x 2 cm. Lay this onto the stack and top with another layer of filo stack. Dust the top with icing sugar and serve straight away.