Monday, September 22, 2008

.vanilla bean ice cream.



There's nothing better than homemade ice cream. It seems the cartons at the grocery store are shrinking, yet the prices are increasing! And what you do find is ice cream made with all kinds of fillers, artificial flavors, and chemicals. Those aren't healthy for you. Making your own helps you control what exactly goes into your sweet treat and you can create whatever flavor you want! Sounds good to me.

This night I made vanilla bean to go on top of our peach cobbler. So delicious. If you don't have an ice cream maker, I really recommend getting one. It's a lot of fun for the whole family. I own a Cuisinart electric one. You put the bowl in the freezer, pour in your flavored cream, then turn it on. Pretty easy. I haven't seen a crank one in ages, which require a lot of ice and rock salt to get the ice cream frozen. Ice cream is very easy to make. Let me show you!


Take one vanilla bean and slice it in half lengthwise. Inside you'll find a bunch of little black things. This is real vanilla. Scrape out as much as you can with the knife.


In a pot, put 2 cups milk, 2 cups cream and the vanilla bean and all the scrapings. We want to infuse the cream with all of that good vanilla flavor. Let it sit for about 30 minutes on the counter.


In a bowl, put 3 eggs and 3/4 cups sugar. Whisk together.


Put the milk on the stove and heat over medium heat until a skin forms on top. This term is "scalded". Add a dash of salt.


Pour a little into the egg/sugar bowl while whisking. You want to temper the eggs. The eggs will start cooking the moment the hot liquid touches them so make sure you're whisking while adding otherwise you'll have clumps of cooked egg in your ice cream. Nasty.


Once you've added a little of the cream to the eggs and tempered them, add back into the pot. Whisk well.

At this point, strain all of the cream into a bowl. Cover with saran and put in the fridge. You want to chill this mixture before freezing otherwise it won't freeze at all.

Pour the cold cream mix into your ice cream maker. Put in the paddle and then turn on according to the directions on your machine.

Your ice cream won't be solid. It will be a lot like soft serve ice cream when it's done. What you do at this point is scoop all of your ice cream into a bowl or some sort of tupperware container. Put in the freezer and let it set.

After it's been in the freezer for 2-3 hours, it's ready for scooping. Serve with whatever toppings you like!

This makes 2 quarts. If you want more, double the recipe.


Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_112gwxpbv6d

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great looking recipe. Do you cook the actual vanilla bean strip or just cook the contents you scraped out of the bean?

Your recipes are all wonderful and I love all the nice photos to go along with the instructions.

Thanks!

squillen said...

Hi Lisa,

I put all of the vanilla bean into the cream and milk. When you strain the cream at the end before putting in the fridge, it will catch the pod. The reason why I put the pod and seeds in the milk is because there's still a lot of vanilla flavor in the whole thing and you don't want to miss out on that.

Mandi said...

Looks delicious! I might have to go get an ice cream maker!