Coconut 7-Layer Bar Ice Cream

A friend and I stopped into Ben and Jerry's last weekend at North Hills Mall (while I was dropping off my rings...) and I noticed a flavor I had never tried before. While my health-conscious friend got the berry sorbet in a cup, I went with a scoop of Coconut 7-Layer Bar in a waffle cup. It was one of the most delicious ice cream flavor I have ever experienced. A burst of coconut from the ice cream and then bits of graham cracker, coconut and caramel. Mmmmmm.

After I finished off the ice cream and the waffle cup, I decided I had to try to recreate that ice cream. I had most of the ingredients I needed in house already. I just had to get a bunch of heavy cream for the caramel and the ice cream. I used a recipe from Erin's Food Files for the caramel, Salted Caramel Sauce. It was extremely hard to restrain ourselves from eating spoonfuls out of the jar. Extremely.

I'll admit. I have no clue how to make ice cream, I have never made it before. I was given the ice cream maker attachment for our mixer last year but I've only tried sorbets with it so far. I decided I had to go searching for a coconut ice cream recipe. I found one on Leite's Culinaria that turned out great. One thing I learned, at least from this experience, making ice cream takes a lot of steps. I had two questions: 1. Why did I think it was just adding cream, sugar and vanilla to an ice maker and then mixing for a while? 2. Have we made ice cream making harder than it needs to be? I did some research and it seems it has to do with the eggs in the ice cream I made. I looked for some other recipes and all of the ones that are more custard-like include eggs in the ingredients - which leads to heating the mixture before chilling it. So, I guess there are easier ways but this turned out great so, I'm not complaining.

Anyways, since I was using my Kitchen Aid ice cream attachment, I stuck that in the freezer at the same time I put my ice cream mixture into the refrigerator. They both chilled for 24 hours in preparation for the blending process. I turned on my mixer and poured the ice cream mixture into the bowl. I let it blend and freeze for 10 minutes. At that point, I took broken up pieces of graham crackers, chopped semi-sweet chocolate and some toasted coconut and added that to the ice cream bowl. I let the machine continue to blend and added the salted caramel sauce. I added it in streams to the ice cream as the bowl was still blending. This led to a good mix of ice cream and caramel. I let the mixer run for another 5 minutes after adding all of the ingredients and turned off the mixer. I moved the ice cream to a tupperware container and stuck it in the freezer so it could come to a completely frozen state.

Coconut 7-Layer Bar Ice Cream
Serves: 4
4 graham crackers, broken into small pieces and crumbs
2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate, broken into small pieces. You can use chocolate chips, chopped into smaller bits
1/4 cup toasted coconut Refrigerated mixture for
1/3 cup Salted Caramel Sauce
Refrigerated mixture for Toasted Coconut Ice Cream

• Remove the caramel sauce from the refrigerator at least 1/2 hour before prepping the ice cream.
• Assemble your ice cream maker and turn on to the lowest setting.
• Add the toasted coconut ice cream mixture and mix on lowest speed for 10 minutes
• Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the ice cream maker. Add the graham crackers, chocolate and coconut to the ice cream and turn the ice cream maker back on again.
• While the mixer is running, add spoonfuls of caramel sauce, so it blends evenly with the ice cream. 
• Let the ice cream maker run for 5 minutes after adding all ingredients, then turn off the ice cream maker and move the ice cream from the bowl to your ice cream storage container. Freeze for at least 3 hours or until fully frozen.
• Serve with more caramel sauce on top. I like to also top this with some chopped walnuts or pecans.

Please excuse me. I have to go eat this entire bowl of ice cream now.