The Cure for the Common Ice Cream

I wanted ice cream the other day. We had vanilla, which normally is kind of blah but still good (at least I have a decent variety of toppings). But this wasn't regular vanilla, this was low fat (and therefore high sugar) fake-tasting vanilla, bought on a "buy 1 get 1 free" special at Big Y. The corresponding low fat cookies and cream was good, but this stuff was hard to disguise even with a huge spoonful of caramel sauce and low fat whipped cream.

What's a girl to do?

I'll tell you: make apple pie ice cream.

Apple Pie Ice Cream
courtesy of my own crazy head

1 gallon boring vanilla ice cream, softened slightly (left on the counter for a while, or 30 sec in the microwave)
3 apples, peeled, cored, and cut into small chunks
1t cinnamon
1T sugar
1T caramel ice cream topping or honey (optional)

Get the ice cream out of the freezer, leave on the counter to soften up.

In a small saucepan, combine apples, cinnamon and sugar. Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until apples soften. The mixture will get nice and syrupy and bubbly and smell amazing.

Add caramel to apples, stir to combine.

Add that to the softened ice cream. Stir to combine.
(honestly, I should have probably used the mixer for this, the ice cream wasn't uniformly softened and I didn't get the apples incorporated as homogeneously as I'd have liked)

Freeze, for a few hours or overnight. If you melted the ice cream too much, you might get some ice crystals, but then it has a semi freddo consistency, which I think is kind of fun. I think using the ice cream maker to refreeze the ice cream might avoid that.