Banana "Red Hot" Ice Cream

**The "Red Hot" in the title refers to these hard cinnamon flavored candies.

This recipe is from the Humphry Slocombe cookbook. If you're not familiar with it, Hunphry Slocombe is a San Francisco ice cream shop that is known for it's unique flavors. I've been there and the ice cream is delicious.

Here's a sampling of flavors from the book: chocolate smoked salt, Harvey milk and honey, fluffernutter, oolong, salted licorice, peanut butter curry, salt and pepper, sweet summer corn, butter beer, Thai chile lime, strawberry candied jalapeno, hibiscus beet...

I decided to make the banana Red Hot ice cream because Dave loves both bananas and cinnamon. My friend Jill tested the strawberry ice cream recipe.

The banana Red Hot ice cream was delicious, but there's a problem with the recipe--it has too much sugar. The recipe calls for two cups which seems like a crazy amount, so I used only one cup of sugar and it was still quite sweet. Jill had a similar problem with the strawberry ice cream--there was too much salt in the recipe. So, my suggestion is that if you make any recipes from this book, be careful about the quantities of the ingredients and use your best judgement. That being said, this is a really fun book with some awesome ice cream flavors.

Red Hot Banana Ice Cream 
3 ripe bananas, sliced
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water
2 cups heavy cream (I used coconut milk instead)
1 cup whole milk (I used soy creamer)
1 teaspoon salt (I added less)
3 egg yolks
1 cup granulated sugar (I left this out)
1/2 cup Red Hots, chopped (these are so hard to chop!)

In a large heavy saucepan over medium heat, combine the bananas, brown sugar, and water. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the bananas are completely mushy, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a blender, reserving the saucepan. Process the banana mixture to a smooth puree. Set aside.

Fill a large bowl or pan with ice and water. Place a large, clean bowl in the ice bath and fit the bowl with a fine-mesh strainer.

In the reserved saucepan over medium heat, combine the cream, milk, and salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until hot but not boiling.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk together the banana puree, egg yolks, and granulated sugar until well blended.

Remove the cream mixture from the heat. Slowly pour about half of the hot cream mixture into the yolk mixture, whisking constantly. Transfer the yolk mixture back to the saucepan with the remaining cream mixture and return it to medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula and being sure to scrape the bottom of the saucepan so it doesn't scorch, until the liquid begins to steam and you can feel the spatula scrape against the bottom of the pan, 2 to 3 minutes.

Remove the custard from the heat and immediately pour it through the strainer into the clean bowl you set in the ice bath. Let cool, stirring occasionally.

Transfer the custard to an ice cream maker and spin according to the manufacturer's instructions. Right after spinning, fold in the Red Hots. Eat immediately, or transfer to an airtight container, cover, and freeze for up to 1 week.