This recipe for homemade cinnamon apple pie ice cream takes our family’s favorite creamy cinnamon ice cream and kicks the fall flavors up a notch with buttery bits of diced apples and sweet and crunchy graham cracker pie crust pieces swirled throughout the creamy ice cream base. It’s delicious on its own but pairs perfectly with warm apple pie or our go-to easy oatmeal apple crisp!
What are your thoughts on apple picking? A fall must? More hassle than its worth? Overrated? Something you look forward to every year?
Our family falls firmly in the “love it” camp… but with some reservations. We’re in the “love it” camp but always go into apple picking with low expectations. Sometimes it’s a slam dunk and our boys are all about it. The orchard serves as a crazy-fun adventure maze for them as they seek out the perfect apple to pluck off the tree and add to their baskets.
Other times, mosquitos are rockin’ at the apple orchard and toddler fussiness reaches new heights and Ryan and I look at ourselves like whyyy did we do this? Thankfully this year was a slam dunk year so I’m writing this post with good memories fresh in my brain. Fingers crossed for next year…
Regardless of whether apple picking was a blast and a half or a major fail, it’s always wonderful to leave the orchard with bags of apples that serve as a great excuse to make a million different apple treats for the next few days… or, um weeks, because we pick a gazillion apples.
More often than not, we default to making our favorite oatmeal apple crisp on repeat and this year, as I made my fourth batch (yes, really), I had a thought. We typically pair our oatmeal apple crisp with ice cream and my cinnamon ice cream is our go-to. As I was eating this particular combination, I thought it might be fun to combine the two and try my hand at making a cinnamon apple pie ice cream.
Well this particular brainchild worked. It worked really well.
The cinnamon ice cream base our family adores is rich and creamy and wonderful but if you love a little texture in your ice cream, the apple pie version is the one for you. It incorporates lots of buttery little apple bits and sweet and crispy graham cracker pie crust pieces and tastes like fall in a bowl. I’m already dreaming of making this one to serve along with a plethora of pies and oatmeal apple crisp when we host Thanksgiving this year.
To make this recipe for cinnamon apple pie ice cream, you’ll need the following ingredients:
- Heavy cream and whole milk: For a rich ice cream base
- Sugar: Because ya know we like things sweet around here
- Biscoff spread: The sneaky secret ingredient
- Egg yolks, vanilla extract and cinnamon: To make the ice cream base
- Apples: So you can put your orchard haul to good use
- Butter: Because everything is better with butter
- Graham Cracker Pie Crust or Cooked Traditional Pie Crust: This is a “choose your own path” recipe; pick a pie crust based on your favorite… or your level of laziness which, in my case, leads me to pick store-bought graham cracker pie crust every time
Everything comes together to create the creamiest, cinnamon-dusted bowl of apple pie flavored ice cream that will leaving you licking your bowl clean. Truly. At least I do.
If you give this recipe a try, I would love it if you’d leave a review and let me know what you think! I hope you love it so much and that it becomes a fall staple for you!
Cinnamon Apple Pie Ice Cream
Cinnamon Apple Pie Ice Cream
Description
Homemade cinnamon apple pie ice cream: A creamy cinnamon ice cream base with buttery bits of diced apples and sweet and crunchy graham cracker pie crust pieces
For the ice cream base:
- 1 3/4 cups heavy cream
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup Biscoff spread
- 2 egg yolks, whisked
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
For the mix-ins:
- 2 large apples, peeled and diced into very small pieces (large pieces may taste too icy)
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 6-ounce graham cracker pie crust, broken up into pieces (you may also swap out cooked pie crust pieces in place of graham cracker pie crust if you’d prefer)
Instructions
1. In a saucepan over medium-low heat, combine 1 cup heavy cream, 1/2 cup whole milk and 1 cup of sugar, stirring constantly as the sugar dissolves and mixture begins to simmer. Add Biscoff spread and stir until completely melted into the mixture.
2. Pour in whisked egg yolks, rapidly stirring them into the warm mixture. Quickly add remaining cream and whole milk and stir to combine.
3. Remove saucepan from heat, add vanilla and 2 teaspoons cinnamon, cover and refrigerate until completely cooled and chilled.
4. Slowly heat butter in a skillet until melted. Add apples and saute in butter. Once apples are warm, add in 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon and continue to cook on low for about 8 minutes or until the apples are soft and lightly browned.
5. Cover and refrigerate until completely cooled and chilled.
6. Pour the ice cream mixture (not the apples!) into ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions, adding the apples and graham cracker pie crust pieces during the final 2-3 minutes of the churn cycle. (I churned my ice cream for approximately 25 minutes in my Cuisinart 2-quart ice cream maker and added the apples and pie crust pieces around minute 23. I let everything churn a bit longer until it was nice and thick.)
7. Enjoy immediately if you like soft ice cream or freeze for at least 6 hours (ideally overnight!) if you prefer perfectly scoopable ice cream!
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