Who Knew Ginger was Acidic?

Yesterday's weather forecast had today being the last exceptionally warm day for a while.  I thought the same a couple of weeks ago too, but one of these days it has to cool off.  To observe the last warm day I had the spur of the moment idea to make a batch of ice cream and invite people over for dinner at Amy Ruth's and dessert at my place. 

Ginger ice cream sounded good to me.  I went to the grocery market and bought ginger, milk, cream and a bunch of other stuff I didn't really need.  I googled for ginger ice cream recipes, finding a couple that seemed good.  Everything was good to go.  All I had to do was whip up the custard and then spam people with an invitation.

Ice cream is relatively easy to make.  You heat up some milk and sugar, whip up egg yolks and sugar then mix the two up to make a custard, add cream and you're good to go.  If you want to make chocolate or ginger ice cream you add those to the milk and sugar mix.  The recipe I used called for chopping the ginger.   When I've made ginger milk shakes I've shredded the ginger a food processor and figured that would bring out more ginger flavor.   

Bad idea.

The milk and sugar were in a saucepan over low heat.  I added the ginger, gave it a stir, and went about separating the eggs.  I guess ginger is acidic.  I went to stir the milk mix and saw that it had curdled as above.  Gingered curds and whey does not good ice cream make!  It was too late to buy more milk and eggs.  No ginger ice cream.  No Amy Ruth's.  No ginger ice cream.

But what's a frugal person to do with a cup of sweet gingered cheese curds?

Make ginger-spice raisin muffins!  With sugar already added muffins were the way to go.  Since I was dealing with sour milk I improvised off a sour cream muffin recipe.  The batter was a little dry but I'm rather pleased with how they turned out.

Comments

[Charlene]

As I started reading, I was thinking that perhaps I should make some ginger ice cream tomorrow! Thanks for the story, and the warning about it. Your muffins look fabulous. Great recovery!!

[calivalleygirl]

That reminds me of a dinner I had once with friends, the theme was asparagus. The desert was white asparagus cooked in a sugar water with rasberries, and we were supposed to make this orange ice cream to go with it...of course it curdled...I am still cursing that recipe today. However, we managed to recover with grace: we went to the local ice cream parlor (Italian ice cream makers are all over the place here in Germany), got some vanilla, and then used our curdled orange syrup as a sauce...it was doable, not for repeats, but still, a nice save....I am so loving your blog by the way!