Apple Pie Ice Cream: Random Kitchen Appliance Adventures

A new 2 year tradition: buying a random kitchen appliance from Macy's during the Thanksgiving holiday sales. Last year, it was a waffle iron. We had just finished brunch on black Friday. I wanted a waffle, but my mom insisted I get something more, um, grown up? So I got Eggs Benedict's. They tasted awful. So we bought a waffle iron at a sale to make up for that. And I made delicious pumpkin waffles for dinner and all was good.
This year, it was an ice cream maker. Except instead of post-Thanksgiving sales, it was pre-Thanksgiving sales, on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. My musings on the timing of American consumerism aside, this thing is a monstrous beautiful thing.

Technical ramblings: The ice cream machine surprisingly quite large, with the majority of its bulk occupied by a coolant-filled lining thats frozen to keep everything maximally chilled and freezing during an otherwise pretty simple and boring period of turning. Its basically just a really really really cold bucket and constant churning that makes for ice cream.

I've been pining for an ice cream machine for ages. The number of times I've stared on amazon at ice cream makers and the number of times I've gazed forlornly at an ice cream recipe is a little upsetting. For my first batch of what I'm sure will be many, I made apple pie ice cream. I had leftover apple filling from the apple pie cupcakes I made previously that sounded like would go great mixed in with a vanilla bean custard ice cream. The overall recipe with links to each part is below:

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Apple Pie Ice Cream

servings: ideally 1, but if you have to share, maybe 10?

time: wibbly wobbly timey wimey (prep 1 day in advance)

Things you need:

• for Vanilla Bean Ice Cream-- recipe from Cuisinart Recipe.
• for Apple Pie Filling--recipe from food fanatic. (literally the Apple Pie Filling Section)
• Optional: Walnuts
• Necessary: Bowl or another dessert as a vehicle for ice cream

Instructions:

1. Make vanilla bean ice cream base and chill in fridge according to recipe.
• generally between 6-24 hours depending on a) how well you plan ahead and b) patience
• make sure your ice cream machine bowl is chilled 24 hours or you'll be sad. :(
2. Make apple pie filling and allow to cool according to recipe before storing in fridge.
• generally--you want anything in your ice cream as cold as possible.
3. Before putting ice cream base into your machine bowl, mix apple pie filling into ice cream base.
4. Make according to your ice cream machine's manufacture instructions.
• In the last 5 minutes of churning, toss in walnuts.
• per instructions, you'll probably also have to store ice cream in the freezer for an addition 2 hours to allow it to further firm up.
5. Consume. On everything.

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Step 5 is particularly difficult, so I've added some photos below of some different ways to successfully approach it.

A la mode style on top of an apple pie cupcake.

Smashed and melting between 2 snickerdoodles

With yo favorite seasonal pie