#8 Imperial Red Hot Blast

Candy + Ice Cream = EPIC TREAT

Yes, I'm back on the cinnamon bandwagon...

I bought these Cinnamon Imperials at an awesome gourmet restaurant supply store called Surfas. They can help you fill your kitchen with neat culinary items. Or you can just go and buy things at random to assist in exploring various fancy food hobbies and cooking aspirations. There's something in there for everyone to buy! And if you're lucky you might see some Top Chef contestants shopping in there too! I bought my 2 quart tupperwares from Surfas. They make excellent storage containers for freshly made batches of ice cream. I also buy their cylindrical pint and quart containers to transfer the ice cream to when I give it away or when I only have a little bit left. There's a pint of Red Velvet Valentine Cheesecake ice cream in the fridge here at work. I'm going to tell my coworker to go finish it before the fridge goblins devour it first.

There's just something about cinnamon that is so delicious. You can't deny it. When I think of cinnamon it leads me to thinking of French Toast. (A French Toast ice cream perhaps... the perfect breakfast substitute.) Anyway, after the amazing success of the Vanilla Cinnamon Crumbled Crumb Donut ice cream I wanted to make another cinnamon ice cream and now it's finally here: Imperial Red Hot Blast!

I followed the cinnamon ice cream recipe I used previously, incorporating cinnamon extract and vanilla extract into the initial milk mixture, but I also used a half teaspoon of real ground cinnamon to give it an extra kick. Rather than 1 cup of regular sugar I used a 1/2 cup of sugar and a 1/2 cup of brown sugar because cinnamon + brown sugar = best friends.

While the ice cream was churning in the machine I attempted to grind up the red hots in my mini-food processor. This was completely ineffective as the blade just stripped the red hots of their vibrant red coating. Some of them got chopped up, but they weren't as finely chopped as I would have liked (although I still added them to the ice cream anyway). The cinnamon candies gave the ice cream a nice red/white/pinkish swirl which was similar to the color of the candy cane crunch ice cream I made last year.

Perhaps there was a little too much sugar because this ice cream is SWEET. A single scoop is the perfect serving. The red hots give the ice cream a nice crunch and blast you with spicy flavor after each bite. (Something else that blasted off today was the Space Shuttle Discovery. Good luck on your last mission, Discovery!) The hot and cold combination tingles the taste buds like that Katy Perry song might tingle your vestibulocochlear nerve. The best way to summarize this ice cream without being overly descriptive or using silly metaphors is: "creamy hot tomale" (quoted phrase courtesy of Certified Ice Cream Taster, Travis Cook).

Good noms for all!