Licorice Ice Cream

The flavor of Fernet reminded me of licorice, and that made me think of a Chocolate Fernet gelato I made. So why not Licorice ice cream? I'd never seen it, but the interwebs say it exists and there are recipes like this one from Epicurious.

I used licorice by Wiley Wallaby, as it seemed less like synthetic candy than Twizzlers. I also got some Pontefract Cakes from the UK which are more intense and less sweet, so I'll try that next. I've got some Brewers Licorice which I'd also like to try but need to understand how much to dilute it, as it's definitely not a candy: "will burn your mouth... wear gloves"!

Here's our first take on licorice ice cream; sorry, no pictures this time.

140 g       5 oz   Licorice
360 ml  1 1/2 C    Milk
360 ml  1 1/2 C    Heavy Cream
175 g     3/4 C    Sugar
pinch              Salt
  4         4      Egg Yolks
2.5 ml    1/2 tsp  Vanilla

Melt the Licorice in the Milk, slowly, stirring frequently; I got impatient and blitzed it with an immersion blender.
The licorice contains flour so it thickened the Milk quite a bit.
The licorice dye turns the Milk a ghastly gray-green color somewhere between camo and radically overcooked peas; if you have it, a few drops of Black Food Coloring would help.
Add Cream, Sugar, Salt, Vanilla and heat to dissolve.
Adjust heat to under 82C/180F -- higher than 85C/185F will curdle the Eggs.
Whisk the Egg Yolks.
Temper the Yolks by adding some of the hot liquid to them while whisking, then add this back to the hot Cream mixture.
Heat to 82-85C, 180-185F so the Yolks will thicken the Cream.
Pour into a container; it has a disturbingly gelatinous texture, like wallpaper paste, but should be fine once churned. The taste is good, like very sweet licorice; serving cold should balance out the sugar.
Cool overnight.
Process in an ice cream churn, put in a container and freeze overnight.
The thickness caused our churn to really struggle, but the finished texture came out fine.
Taste was good, not as intense as I'd like, but definitely a decent and slightly unusual dessert with an uncommon flavor profile.