Adrienne Borlongan remembers her twin sister asking for candy and gum at the supermarket while she begged her mother for issues of Food & Wine or Bon Appétit. Even before she could read, Borlongan had collections of cookbooks. Her obsessions started with soup and cookies. Although she considered culinary school, her immigrant mother encouraged a more practical career. "And for Filipinos, that's nursing," Borlongan says. After taking the prerequisites, she switched her major to food science.
With a background in food science, Adrienne Borlonga makes ice cream inspired by global flavors. Photo by Max Milla.
A couple of ice cream makers and several flavor experiments later, she took a gamble and opened Wanderlust Creamery. Impressed by the texture but not the run-of-the-mill flavors of other ice creams, she wanted to make "flavors that sparked a sense of adventure."
"I was making ice cream made from fig leaves from my backyard. I had gone to Croatia a year before and had cheese wrapped in fig leaves and baked with honey. I was inspired by walking down the aisles of the Middle Eastern market and seeing all these flavors I had never heard of before and ingredients I've never heard of before," Borlongan says.
The night before a big press event for Wanderlust's opening, Borlongan concocted a Mango Sticky Rice flavor that had guests swooning.
Her new cookbook, The Wanderlust Creamery Presents: The World of Ice Cream, offers detailed and often incredibly technical advice on how to make flavors such as Pandan Tres Leches, Salted Kaya Toast, Ramune Sherbet, Strawberry Daifuku, Earl Grey Milk Chocolate, and Royal Prune Armagnac.
This Ube Malted Crunch ice cream calls for ube from a jar and dulce de leche made in a pressure cooker. Photo by Max Milla.
Ube Malted Crunch
Makes about 1 quart (1 liter)
Before ube was everywhere in the dessert world, it was a big part of my Filipino American identity. Growing up in a predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles, my mom would buy two cakes for my childhood birthday parties. She’d buy an ube cake for me and our relatives, and a generic chocolate or vanilla cake for all the kids from school. She and I both knew from experience that they’d refuse to eat the ube cake. Never mind the mild vanilla-like flavor; it looked “weird and purple” and that was enough for a kid to refuse a slice. Looking back on this, I wanted to encapsulate my experience as a Filipino American in a flavor. So, I combined a classic flavor of Americana—a malted shake—with this emblematic Filipino purple yam. Incidentally, the wheaty, cereal flavor of malt combined with ube tastes just like the ube birthday cake from my childhood. With both the malted milk and malted crunch, it’s classic ube ice cream reinvented—Filipino ice cream grown up as American. Nearly eight years after making this a signature flavor at Wanderlust Creamery, it is still our bestseller by miles. To this day, the child in me is astonished to see kids of all races walk out with a purple ice cream mustache.
Ingredients
For the base
- 1 tablespoon + ½ teaspoon (8 g) nonfat dry milk powder
- 2 tablespoons (22 g) malted milk powder
- ¼ cup + 2 tablespoons (75 g) granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons + ¾ teaspoon (20 g) glucose powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon (2 g) tara gum (optional)
- 1¾ cups (430 g) whole milk
- 3½ tablespoons + 1 teaspoon (75 g) sweetened condensed milk
- 1 tablespoon + 1½ teaspoons (70 g) ube halaya (purple yam jam)
- 1¾ cups (405 g) heavy cream
- 2½ teaspoons ube extract
For the ice cream
- 1 cup (185g) Malted Crunch (recipe follows)
Instructions
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Prepare an ice bath (see page 39).
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Make the base: In a small bowl, whisk together the milk powder, malted milk powder, sugar, glucose powder, salt, and stabilizer. In a tall cylindrical 1½-quart (1.5 liter) mixing vessel, blend the milk, condensed milk, and ube halaya with a hand blender. Slowly add the dry ingredients while blending and blend thoroughly to dissolve all the solids.
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Pour the mixture into a medium saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, whisking constantly, until it reaches 165°F (75°C) on an instant-read thermometer.
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Once the base reaches 165°F (75°C), immediately remove it from the heat and pour it back into the tall mixing vessel. Add the heavy cream and blend with a hand blender for 2 minutes to fully homogenize.
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Pour the base through a f ine-mesh sieve into the prepared ice bath to cool. Once completely cool, stir in the ube extract and transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate for at least 12 hours and up to 3 days.
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Churn the ice cream: When ready to begin, place a loaf pan in the freezer to chill. Quickly blend the ice cream base once more with a hand blender or whisk before pouring it into an ice cream machine. Churn the ice cream until it reaches the texture of very stiff soft-serve and the surface looks dry, about 25°F (–5°C) or colder on a thermometer gun. Add the malted crunch in the last few seconds of churning.
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Transfer the ice cream to the chilled loaf pan. Press a piece of wax paper directly on top of the ice cream and freeze for at least 3 hours before serving.
Malted Crunch
Makes 1 cup (300 g)
Not all malted milk powders are the same. Some contain sugar, while others do not. For this recipe, it’s essential that you use the kind with sugar, so that the powder will melt together into one piece. If the malted milk powder you have doesn’t have sugar listed as an ingredient, use 1½ cups (280 g) of it mixed with 2 tablespoons (20 g) of sugar.
Ingredients
- 1½ cups + 2 tablespoons (300 g) malted milk powder
Instructions
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Adjust two oven racks to the very bottom and middle positions. Fill a baking pan with 1 inch (2.5 cm) of hot water and place it on the bottom rack. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). If your oven has convection, turn off the fan (to prevent blowing away any malted milk powder).
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Line a quarter sheet pan (13 by 9 inches/33 by 23 cm) with wax paper. Pour out the malted milk powder onto the pan as evenly as possible. Place another sheet of wax paper onto the malted milk powder, followed by another quarter-sheet pan. Press down and wiggle the top pan to form the malted milk powder into a layer evenly ¼ inch (6 mm) thick. Once you’ve formed an even 272 layer, press down firmly on the top pan once more to compress the powder.
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Place the whole thing— malted milk powder sandwiched between the two pans—into the oven, then immediately reduce the oven temperature to 300°F (150°C). Bake until the malted milk powder has formed into a solid block but not browned at all, 7 to 9 minutes.
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Allow the malted crunch to cool before peeling off the wax paper and breaking it into ¼-inch (6 mm) pieces with your hands. Store the malted crunch pieces in an airtight container, in a cool and dry place until ready to use, for up to 2 weeks.
Wanderlust Creamery has seven locations across Los Angeles but with a new cookbook, you can try making these flavors at home. Photo courtesy of Abrams.