Apple Pie Kefir Ice Cream

This past Thursday was my older child's first day of school. To celebrate, we went out for ice cream. As we walked from the car, we discussed what flavor he might like to have. His response was "pear!" I wasn't confident they would have such a gourmet flavor, so I mentioned that we could make our own pear ice cream sometime (though I'd never done it before!).

On the way back to the car, after he'd enjoyed his scoop of mint chocolate chip and I my cookies 'n cream, we bought an ice cream maker at Williams-Sonoma (which happened to be right where our car was parked - convenient!).

When we got home, I immediately opened the box, washed the mixing bowl and put it in the freezer (it's filled with a fluid and needs to freeze completely before you can make your frozen treats).

The next day, I decided to just go for it. But I did not have any pears. I examined my refrigerator and freezer and discovered: 1 bottle of vanilla low-fat kefir, 4 organic gala apples and some frozen all natural pie crust. So I decided to make:

Apple Pie Kefir Ice Cream (2 quarts)



Ingredients:

4 organic gala apples
4 cups of vanilla low-fat organic kefir
2 cups of low-fat organic milk
3/4 cup granulated organic sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp organic butter
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
1 all natural pie crust

Directions:

1. Keep the ice cream maker's mixing bowl in the freezer until the last second before you use it.
2. Peel, core and dice the apples. In a saucepan, melt some butter and add the apples, brown sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp nutmeg and 1 cup of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer, occasionally stirring, until the apples are soft. Taste test to ensure the seasoning is as you like it. Let cool to room temperature.
3. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the pie crust on a cookie sheet and bake until golden brown. Remove and let cool to room temperature.
4. Strain the apple mixture and place it in a large bowl. Add the milk, kefir, granulated sugar and 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract. Taste test to see if you need to add more cinnamon or nutmeg. Mix this all together.
5. Remove the ice cream maker's mixing bowl from the freezer and put it in the ice cream machine. Put your ice cream mixture in the bowl, put the mixing arm in and the top on. Run until the mixture thickens (about 30 minutes).
6. Break up the pie crust and scatter it at the bottom of a Pyrex storage container. Scoop the ice cream out of the mixing bowl and put on top of the crust. Smooth the top and put the covered container into the freezer until you want to serve it.
7. When you serve it, don't forget to scoop some crust from the bottom!

My family LOVED this.

Postscript: If you plan to freeze this and serve it another day, allow 5 minutes for it to thaw -- it does freeze quite hard. Alternatively, you could make this into wonderful popsicles!