Grape-Nuts is an unlikely fun dessert. But in the world of New England cookery, which features such grumpy-named specialties as boiled dinner, slump, and grunt, the little brown pebbles of breakfast cereal (which are wheat and barley and contain neither grapes nor nuts) are inspiration for crazy stuff. There is no documentation as to when some bright cook surmised that a custard pudding could be improved by stirring in Grape-Nuts. Perhaps the cupboard lacked crackers for cracker pudding; some reports say it began as a back-of-the-box recipe from C. W. Post. Wherever it came from, Grape-Nuts pudding has been a dessert staple in New England (but nowhere else) for generations, and Grape-Nuts ice cream also is a favorite throughout the region.
Because the cereal is very hard and dense, it never completely disintegrates when it is stirred into pudding or ice cream. It becomes streaks of amber grain, offering textural contrast to its smooth medium as well as an earthy flavor to balance the frivolity of sweetened custard.
Grape-Nuts originally were marketed in 1897 to compete with Granula, which was the predecessor to Kellogg’s granola.
Grape-Nuts Ice Cream
We’ve never figured out why Grape-Nuts became a staple in the Yankee kitchen and nowhere else in the United States, where it is considered mere cereal. Many New England restaurants with a sense of local history offer Grape-Nuts pudding for dessert, and several of the best ice cream parlors make Grape-Nuts ice cream, in which the cereal becomes a semi-savory note in sweet vanilla-flavored cream.
If you have an ice cream maker and a favorite recipe for 2 pints of vanilla, just add a cup of cereal to it. We use this rich formula.
6 egg yolks
⅔ cup sugar
3 cups cream
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup Grape-Nuts cereal
1. Beat the egg yolks with an electric mixer at high speed until pale and thick. Slowly mix in the sugar, continuing to beat.
2. Warm 2 cups of the cream in the top of a double boiler.
3. Gradually add about a cup of the hot cream to the yolks, beating constantly. Then gradually add the warmed yolks back to the top of the double boiler with the warm cream. Over moderate heat, cook and stir constantly, using a rubber spatula to scrape the sides until the mixture is custard-thick. Remove the top of the double boiler from over the hot water and pour the mixture into a bowl to cool. Stir occasionally while cooling. When room temperature, add the remaining 1 cup of cream, the vanilla, and the cereal.
4. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to directions.
2 PINTS