Vanilla Ice Cream

Homemade ice cream... is a lot of fun (usually).. and does seem to taste a lot better than the frozen stuff from your local deli. This recipe from David Lebovitz is definitely one of the better ones I've tried out. The resulting ice cream is rich in vanilla and very creamy. Just try to forget you have to use 2 cups of pure cream ... :)

Vanilla Ice Cream
recipe adapted from David Lebovitz's Book ~ The Perfect Scoop

• 1 cup full cream milk
• A pinch of salt
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 vanilla bean (split lengthwise into two, seeds scraped out)
• 6 egg yolks
• 2 cups pure cream (separated into 2x 1 cups)
• 3/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract

--- Ice for an 'ice bath'

1. Warm the milk, salt, and sugar in a saucepan. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds out with the tip of a paring knife and set aside. Add the bean pod to the milk. Continue to simmer on the lowest heat setting.


2. In a separate mixing bowl, pour 1 cup of the pure cream and add the vanilla bean seeds into the cream. Whisk the cream a couple of times to break up the seeds and place into an ice bath, then set aside.


3. Once the sugar has melted, add in the remaining 1 cup of pure cream, continue to stir to combine the cream and milk. Then cover and remove from heat and let it sit at room temperature for about 30 mins.


4. Stir together the egg yolks in a bowl and gradually add some of the warmed milk, stirring constantly as you pour. Pour the warmed yolks and milk mixture back into the saucepan.


5. Cooking over a low heat, stir constantly and scraping the bottom with a heat-resistant spatula until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula. Strain the custard into the pure cream with vanilla seeds that was set aside previously in the ice bath.


6. Rinse the vanilla bean and put it back into the custard and cream to continue steeping.


7. Add vanilla extract, and keep on stirring the mixture over the ice bath until it has cooled.


8. Once the mixture has cooled completely, cover with glad wrap and place into the refrigerator. David Lebovitz recommends to leave this as long as possible (ie. overnight). I usually leave it until I'm ready for it to be placed into the ice cream maker. (ie. when I feel like wanting to eat ice cream).


9. When it has chilled thoroughly, remove the vanilla bean and freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturers instructions.

Makes about 1 litre of ice cream.