The idea resurfaced when we were opening Ko and our dessert menu had nothing on it. And the new freezer that was supposed to hold the ice cream for that nonexistent dessert menu was on the fritz. The hype was unbearable, and I was screwed. I needed a dessert, period; a backup dessert would be nice too. And if I was smart about it, it would be one that didn’t need to be frozen to be good: panna cotta fit that bill perfectly. Now, making a good panna cotta—creamy, set just enough to hold its shape but melt in your mouth—is pretty easy. But making an interesting panna cotta—that’s the hard part.
The main dessert I was trying to finalize at the time was a deep-fried apple pie—familiar and comforting. Only my initial recipe testing didn’t go so well, and seemed rather bleak. I needed a plan in case the apple pie and sour cream ice cream I promised crashed and burned, or the freezer decided not to freeze.
I knew what I had to do: use the familiar and comforting approach, and get smart. I had been training for this moment for years: do a milk infusion. I ran to the 24-hour bodega, bought every powdered and dried thing they had, and made a bunch of adventurous, nasty milk-infused flavors; I gave the cereal milk idea a shot too.
Bulls-eye. Everybody loved it, everybody knew it, nobody saw it coming. The funny part is we worked backward from there. My intention was only to make a cereal milk panna cotta for Ko. But Dave saw something in it, saw the reactions of those who ate it night in and night out. Pushy, pushy man that he is, with the strange soothsayer abilities that he has, Dave forcefully reminded me on many occasions that I should, at the very least, make cereal milk into ice cream. We simplified it even further, too, to create a line of flavored cereal milk to sell at Milk Bar. We make our OG cereal milk with classy old cornflakes, but we’ve also been known to steep Fruity Pebbles, Cap’n Crunch, and Lucky Charms (the more sugary cereals are what fueled my teenage years and fed my empty stomach, before or after a swig of Diet Mountain Dew—gross but true).
Regardless of whether cereal milk is the beverage for you, the technique—steeping and seasoning milk, then using that milk to make desserts—is a versatile one that exists in pastry and savory kitchens all over the world. It’s a technique that’s simple and totally accessible in your own home kitchen as well.
Elsewhere in this book: See other examples of steeped milk in the Pretzel Ice Cream, the Graham Ice Cream and the Saltine Panna Cotta.
cereal milk™
MAKES ABOUT 645 G (2½ CUPS); SERVES 4
This was by no means the first recipe that came out of our kitchens, but it is far and away the most popular and what we are known best for. Drink it straight, pour it over more cereal, add it to your coffee in the morning, or turn it into panna cotta or ice cream. Cereal milk. It’s a way of life.
100 g cornflakes
[2¾ cups]
825 g cold milk
[3¾ cups]
30 g light brown sugar
[2 tablespoons tightly packed]
1 g kosher salt
[¼ teaspoon]
Toasting the cornflakes before steeping them deepens the flavor of the milk. Taste your cereal milk after you make it. If you want it a little sweeter, don’t be shy; add a little more brown sugar. If you want a more mellow cereal milk, add a splash of fresh milk and a pinch of salt.
1. Heat the oven to 300°F.
2. Spread the cornflakes on a parchment-lined sheet pan. Bake for 15 minutes, until lightly toasted. Cool completely.
3. Transfer the cooled cornflakes to a large pitcher. Pour the milk into the pitcher and stir vigorously. Let steep for 20 minutes at room temperature.
4. Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve, collecting the milk in a medium bowl. The milk will drain off quickly at first, then become thicker and starchy toward the end of the straining process. Using the back of a ladle (or your hand), wring the milk out of the cornflakes, but do not force the mushy cornflakes through the sieve. (We compost the cornflake remains or take them home to our dogs!)
5. Whisk the brown sugar and salt into the milk until fully dissolved. Store in a clean pitcher or glass milk jug, refrigerated, for up to 1 week.
fruity cereal milk™
MAKES ABOUT 690 G (3 CUPS); SERVES 4
It’s got an endearing pinky-peach color and it makes killer milkshakes.
If you’re not into the color of this finished milk, add a few drops of food coloring to make it any fruity color you please.
Follow the recipe for cereal milk, substituting 100 g (2 cups) Fruity Pebbles for the cornflakes; do not toast the Fruity Pebbles. After measuring, crush the cereal with your hands to the texture of coarse sand or gravel, then steep the milk.
sweet corn cereal milk™
MAKES ABOUT 565 G (2¼ CUPS); SERVES 3
This mellow-yellow milk is good straight or over cereal, and it’s great poured over toasted cornbread. We use it mainly in a filling for an ice cream pie.
Follow the recipe for cereal milk, substituting 100 g (2½ cups) Cap’n Crunch for the cornflakes; do not toast the Cap’n Crunch. After measuring, crush the cereal with your hands to the texture of coarse sand or gravel, then steep the milk.
cereal milk™ panna cotta
SERVES 4
Generally speaking, you only need two ingredients to make a delicious panna cotta: flavored milk and gelatin. Salt and light brown sugar are added to the cereal milk in this recipe to deepen and sharpen the flavor of the panna cotta.
The secret to a profesh panna cotta is just the right amount of gelatin: Just enough to hold it together. As little as possible, so that the second the panna cotta hits your mouth, it transforms into a silky river of flavored cream. So little that you wonder how the dessert held its shape in the first place.
Serve the panna cotta with fresh fruit and/or Cornflake Crunch. Or layer it with Banana Cream and Hazelnut Crunch.
1½ gelatin sheets
½ recipe Cereal Milk
[320 g (1¼ cups)]
25 g light brown sugar
[1½ tablespoons tightly packed]
1 g kosher salt
[¼ teaspoon]
Powdered gelatin can be substituted for the sheet gelatin: use ¾ teaspoon.
1. Bloom the gelatin.
2. Warm a little bit of the cereal milk and whisk in the gelatin to dissolve. Whisk in the remaining cereal milk, brown sugar, and salt until everything is dissolved, being careful not to incorporate too much air into the mixture.
3. Put 4 small glasses on a flat, transportable surface. Pour the cereal milk mixture into the glasses, filling them equally. Transfer to the refrigerator to set for at least 3 hours, or overnight.
cereal milk™ ice cream
MAKES ABOUT 800 G (1 QUART)
Cereal milk is made. Panna cotta, conquered. Easy, right? On to ice cream.
Scoop the ice cream into your favorite pie crust (see our Cereal Milk Ice Cream Pie), sandwich it between your favorite cookies (mine is the Cornflake-Chocolate-Chip-Marshmallow Cookie), or scoop it into a bowl and decorate with your favorite breakfast cereal and jam or jelly.
1½ gelatin sheets
1 recipe Cereal Milk
4 g freeze-dried corn powder
[2 teaspoons]
30 g light brown sugar
[2 tablespoons tightly packed]
1 g kosher salt
[¼ teaspoon]
20 g milk powder
[¼ cup]
50 g glucose
[2 tablespoons]
Powdered gelatin can be substituted for the sheet gelatin: use ¾ teaspoon. In a pinch, substitute 18 g (1 tablespoon) corn syrup for the glucose.
Instead of a whisk, use a hand blender to mix the ice cream base.
1. Bloom the gelatin.
2. Warm a little bit of the cereal milk and whisk in the gelatin to dissolve. Whisk in the remaining cereal milk, the corn powder, brown sugar, salt, milk powder, and glucose until everything is fully dissolved and incorporated.
3. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into your ice cream
machine and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The ice cream is best spun just before serving or using, but it will keep in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 2 weeks.
fruity cereal milk™ ice cream
MAKES ABOUT 800 G (1 QUART)
Like the original, fruity cereal milk ice cream can be used to fill any of the pie crusts in this book or in a milkshake (fruity cereal milk blended with fruity cereal milk ice cream will change your life). We like it best straight out of the freezer, or scattered with Fruity Pebble Crunch on top.
1 gelatin sheet
1 recipe Fruity Cereal Milk
130 g sugar
[¼ cup]
2 g kosher salt
[½ teaspoon]
20 g milk powder
[¼ cup]
50 g glucose
[2 tablespoons]
Powdered gelatin can be substituted for the sheet gelatin: use ½ teaspoon. In a pinch, substitute 18 g (1 tablespoon) corn syrup for the glucose.
Instead of a whisk, use a hand blender to mix the ice cream base.
1. Bloom the gelatin.
2. Warm a little bit of the fruity cereal milk and whisk in the gelatin to dissolve. Whisk in the remaining fruity cereal milk, the sugar, salt, milk powder, and glucose until everything is fully dissolved and incorporated.
3. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into your ice cream machine and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The ice cream is best spun just before serving or using, but it will keep in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 2 weeks.
cereal milk™ white ruskie
SERVES 2
We use the cereal milk ice cream base (the unfrozen ice cream; stop after step 2 in the ice cream recipe) to make white Russians because it stands up to the Kahlúa and vodka better than regular cereal milk does. The liquor in this recipe dulls the cereal milk flavor, so we add freeze-dried corn powder to bring it back.
Why Ruskies? Because I have a younger sister from Kazakhstan and a younger brother from Russia, whom my family affectionately called our “little Ruskies” when they were kids. Here’s to Zha-Zha and Dima.
¼ recipe Cereal Milk Ice Cream base; not frozen
[200 g (1 cup)]
4 g freeze-dried corn powder
[2 teaspoons]
42 g Kahlúa
[3 tablespoons]
42 g vodka
[3 tablespoons]
When we make these with frozen ice cream, we call them fancy shakes™. We sell them at Milk Bar and they kill it, every night.
You don’t have to be a mixologist to bang this girl out. Whisk together the ice cream base, corn powder, Kahlúa, and vodka in a small pitcher or bowl. Pour into two ice-filled glasses. Or, if you’ve got the mixology gear, pour into a cocktail shaker filled with ice, cover, and shake until the shaker is frosty. Strain into two old-fashioned glasses filled with ice.
sweet corn cereal milk™ ice cream pie
MAKES 1 (10–INCH) PIE; SERVES 8 TO 10
One summer we had the idea of putting a frozen ice cream pie on the menu at Ssäm Bar. It would be sliced and stored in the freezer, so all the cooks had to do was get it on a plate, put some fruit on top of it, and—booya!—send it out to the table. Not a lot of work for the already-slammed savory cook.
But that was during the time when we were operating out of a portion of the tiny, tiny basement at Ko, and there wasn’t any extra real estate for a professional ice cream machine. So we took a little time to think about how we could cheat the process a little—basically, we needed to get rid of the churning while freezing.
We ended up finding that our sweet corn cereal milk was the milk that took to the task the best—the freeze-dried corn and Cap’n Crunch combo has this intense corn pudding flavor. It’s so tasty it can be diluted with a lot of fatty, bland cream and still pack a punch of corn flavor. The high proportion of cream, fortified with the starch from the cereal and corn, creates an “ice cream” that freezes soft but hard, a texture kind of like Häagen-Dazs.
Because it gets loose and pourable as it defrosts, the “ice cream” is best for molded frozen uses, like this ice cream pie, or poured into, say, Popsicle molds to make ice cream pops.
Once we had this crazy intense corn ice cream, we set to making a crust corny enough to match it. That process led us down the road to developing our corn cookie, which is the sleeper of all the Milk Bar cookies. It looks so harmless, so plain, so yellow, so un-cookie-like. It’s also my grandma’s favorite. Her house is surrounded by cornfields, so she’s my authority.
225 g Corn Cookies (recipe follows)
[about 3 cookies]
25 g butter, melted, or as needed
[2 tablespoons]
1 recipe Sweet Corn Cereal Milk “Ice Cream” Filling (recipe follows)
Garnish slices of the pie with local fruit of the season. At Ssäm Bar, we macerate a pint of fresh Tristar strawberries with a tablespoon of sugar, a very tiny pinch of salt, and ½ teaspoon rice wine vinegar and spoon over the pie slices.
1. Put the corn cookies in the food processor and pulse it on and off until the cookies are crumbled into bright yellow sand. (If you don’t have a food processor, you can fake it till you make it and crumble the corn cookies diligently with your hands into a bowl.)
2. In a bowl, knead the butter and ground cookie mixture by hand until it is moist enough to form a ball. If it is not moist enough to do so, melt an additional 14 g (1 tablespoon) butter and knead it in.
3. Using your fingers and the palms of your hands, press the corn cookie crust firmly into a 10-inch pie plate. Make sure the bottom and the walls of the pie plate are evenly covered. Wrapped in plastic, the crust can be frozen for up to 2 weeks.
4. Use a spatula to scrape and spread the cereal milk “ice cream” filling into the pie shell. Tap the filled pie against the surface of the counter to even the filling. Freeze the pie for at least 3 hours, or until the “ice cream” is frozen and set hard enough to cut and serve. If you’re saving your slices of heaven for later, you can freeze the ice cream pie, wrapped in plastic, for up to 2 weeks.
corn cookies
MAKES 13 TO 15 COOKIES
For years, this was a recipe I didn’t let out of my kitchen—I don’t know why, but everybody has one or two recipes like that. I finally relented and gave a copy to Rick Bishop, Milk Bar’s favorite strawberry farmer, and he told me he hid it under his kitchen sink, where he knew it would be safe.
225 g butter, at room temperature
[16 tablespoons (2 sticks)]
300 g sugar
[1½ cups]
1 egg
225 g flour
[1⅓ cups]
45 g corn flour
[¼ cup]
65 g freeze-dried corn powder
[¼ cup]
3 g baking powder
[¾ teaspoon]
1.5 g baking soda
[¼ teaspoon]
6 g kosher salt
[1½ teaspoons]
We use corn flour in the corn cookies to deepen the flavor. If you can’t find corn flour, you can substitute 40 g (¼ cup) flour and 8 g (4 teaspoons) freeze-dried corn powder.
1. Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the egg, and beat for 7 to 8 minutes. (See notes on this process.)
2. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour, corn flour, corn powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix just until the dough comes together, no longer than 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
3. Using a 2¾-ounce ice cream scoop (or a ⅓-cup measure), portion out the dough onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Pat the tops of the cookie dough domes flat. Wrap the sheet pan tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 1 week. Do not bake your cookies from room temperature—they will not bake properly.
4. Heat the oven to 350°F.
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5. Arrange the chilled dough a minimum of 4 inches apart on parchment- or Silpat-lined sheet pans. Bake for 18 minutes. The cookies will puff, crackle, and spread. After 18 minutes, they should be faintly browned on the edges yet still bright yellow in the center; give them an extra minute if not.
6. Cool the cookies completely on the sheet pans before transferring to a plate or to an airtight container for storage. At room temp, the cookies will keep fresh for 5 days; in the freezer, they will keep for 1 month.
sweet corn cereal milk™ “ice cream” filling
MAKES ENOUGH FILLING FOR 1 SWEET CORN CEREAL MILK ICE CREAM PIE OR 6 TO 8 POPSICLES
15 g Cap’n Crunch
[¼ cup]
25 g light brown sugar
[1½ tablespoons tightly packed]
12 g granulated sugar
[1 tablespoon]
12 g freeze-dried corn powder
Momofuku Milk Bar Page 6