Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

After reading so many blog entries about homemade ice cream and sorbets, I decided to give in and purchase an ice cream maker two days ago. As soon as I got home, I opened the box like a fortunate kid on Christmas day and placed the bowl in the freezer for future use.

I then went to David Lebovitz's website to look for his Vanilla Bean Ice Cream recipe because I knew that I wanted my first batch of ice cream to be simple yet very decadent. When I returned home, I read over the recipe again and realized that I needed ice. Since I don't use ice regularly, I had to fill up some ice trays and wait for them to freeze. Needless to say, I had to wait until the next day to make the ice cream custard. :(


The next day, I mistakenly thought that I had the rest of the ingredients necessary to make this dish; however, I realized that I needed to get some whole milk, too! Since I only drink skim milk (I was raised on the stuff, so drinking whole milk alone tastes too weird to me), I had to go to the store to buy a pint of whole milk. I first went to Whole Foods. While there, I decided to buy some vanilla beans (4.99 EACH! Woah!), but I could not find any small quantities of whole milk, but they had skim and 2% that size! I asked an employee if they had pints of whole milk, and he informed me that they didn't carry that size. What?! ARGH! So, I had to go to another store to get the milk! Whew!

As soon as I returned home, I started putting everything together. I read the recipe carefully, slowly, and intently. The instructions were slightly more confusing than other recipes I've read (the list of ingredients could have included ice, and the order of the instructions was a bit off), but I was still able to produce a lovely, yummy, and rich dessert.

Making vanilla ice cream was a very eye-opening experience for me. The process made me realize not only how much is put into creating custard-based ice cream, but also how fattening rich, vanilla ice cream can be. Not only did I have to use 1 cup of whole milk and 5 egg yolks, but also TWO cups of HEAVY CREAM! Consequently, just one scoop of this stuff was very filling. Um, yeah, I think I will be making only fruit sorbets from here on out. haha



July is National Ice Cream month, so I'm sending this to the Ice Cream Social Challenge, put together by Savor The Thyme. Tangled Noodle, Scotty Snacks & to Ben’s Homemade# 5: Ice Cream.