Cooking For Engineers

[Huli]

I’m sort of obsessed with baskin robbins peanut butter ice cream.
I would love to know how to make this concoction, particularly the crunchy, salty peanut butter ribbon! Most recipes online say just drizzle peanut butter into chocolate ice cream near the end of churning, but I’m sure it’s NOT going to yield a good result! Can you give me your best guess as to how to make the ribbon - if you’ve had it, you know how crunchy and amazing it is. I don’t know what I’d use to harden it - corn syrup, perhaps? And it certainly has crushed peanuts along with the peanut butter. Thank you for your suggestions!

[Dilbert]

most home ice cream makers would probably puree the peanut butter ribbon into mush in short order . . .

usually the ice cream is still soft - we remove the paddle then stick it in the freezer to harden. seems like adding the ribbon 'by hand' and gently folding it in would come close to duplicating the commercial stuff.

getting it to set up will take some experimenting - I'd start by:

- spread some PB out thin on a baking sheet and freeze it. it will get stiff, whether that's stiff enough...?

- a more active approach: very gently heating creamy peanut butter to make it thinner. heat a syrup (either sugar or corn) - using a candy thermometer you can raise the sugar syrup to soft ball thru hard crack stage. a good primer:

https://www.craftybaking.com/howto/candy-sugar-syrup-temperature-chart

mix hot PB, as many peanuts as your want and hot syrup together, add mix and drizzle into soft ice cream. speed is essential - you have to get it incorporated into the ice cream before it sets up and folded quickly enough the ice cream takes the heat out of the ribbon without totally melting down...

I don't think you can heat the PB and sugar syrup together - the temp you need to convert the sugar will likely burn the PB/peanuts.