Sweet Potato Ice-erole

Thanksgiving is coming up and with the weather taking a turn towards the cooler temps, it seemed like the perfect time to create a fall-y ice cream. While there are no shortage of options for fall flavors, I decided to create a twist on the sweet potato casserole that would be sometimes served at our Thanksgivings. You really can't go wrong with sweet potatoes and marshmallows.

Rating: 4 scoops

I wasn't sure how this ice cream would turn out, but it's not bad. The sweet potato flavor comes through although it tasted somewhat muted to me. Mark suggested (a little late) that some infused pie spices might be good and I agree. The soft marshmallows were a nice textural contrast and, while not traditional in sweet potato casserole, I upped the flavor with a caramel ribbon.

Last fall, I made a pumpkin sage ice cream. While I wasn't a fan of the sage, I thought that base would serve as a good starting point for sweet potatoes - and indeed it did. The sweet potatoes were roasted in the oven and then puréed. Similar to sweet potato casserole, some brown sugar was added to the purée. From there, a classic custard base was put together and the sweet potato mixture was whisked in.

The internet seems divided as to whether or not sweet potato casserole should have marshmallows on top. Some go as far as replacing the marshmallows with a crumble topping. I'm team marshmallow and luckily I had already perfected my marshmallows from my s'more ice cream. It's effectively bloomed gelatin and a hot sugar mixture whipped until fluffy, then cast overnight. Sweet, soft treats are the tasty result.

Finally, I finished off the ingredients with a caramel ripple. I've never made a version for ice cream before but it's similar to a standard caramel sauce - cook some sugar to caramelize it, stop the cooking with butter, and add some cream to make the sauce. The only difference is that you want to ensure that it will stay scoopable in the freezer so some gelatin in the warm cream was the answer.