Ice Cream is expensive. I mean really, it is expensive! At $6.99 per tub for low fat ice cream, the thought struck me that I should really be a little bit better about making my own. Not only does it taste better but in the long run, it is a lot cheaper. At home I have a cookbook, a wonderful cookbook, called The Perfect Scoop. The book is by a man named David Lebovitz who is a pastry chef that lives in Paris and has actually written several books. Since I am a cookbook lover I am rather critical of books and I am critical of Mr. Lebovitz's book too. He chats too much about nothing and his voice annoys me a little but his recipes are outstanding. In the book there is variety in technique, flavor and skill and despite the criticism, it is always the book that I recommend for ice cream.
In The Perfect Scoop, there is a recipe for Philadelphia-Style Vanilla Ice Cream. This ice cream is va-va-vanilla and so if you are more of a va-vanilla, feel free to decrease the amount of extract or bean in the recipe. I used to make this ice cream for tastings at Williams Sonoma back in the days when the store didn't sell its own ice cream starter and it was a favorite of one of my favorite managers, Margie Marg (Hi Marg!). She liked super-intense vanilla flavor and as I said before, this recipe easily delivers in both vanilla flavor and also in ease of making. I'm not even sure I want to say how easy it is to make because then Collin will think that I didn't slave over the ice cream maker for hours! However, it is easy. Really easy. I will provide the recipe below with a couple of changes that I've made and I hope you try it and enjoy it on a hot day.
THE PERFECT SCOOP'S PHILADELPHIA-STYLE VANILLA ICE CREAM (adapted)
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk (I use skim with no problem, use what you have in the fridge)
3/4 cup granulated sugar (if you don't like a really sweet ice cream, I'm sure you could decrease this a little bit without too much of a problem)
1 vanilla bean (I used half a bean because they are darn expensive to waste a whole one on ice cream!)
1 teaspoon good vanilla extract*
1 tiny pinch of salt (this helps bring out the vanilla flavor)
In a saucepan, combine one cup of the heavy cream, all the sugar, the pinch of salt and the vanilla bean (assuming that you are using one at all -- you don't have to, you know!). Warm the mixture until the sugar has dissolved, it should take just a few minutes on medium heat. When the sugar is dissolved, add the other cup of cream, the milk and the vanilla extract and chill the mixture in the fridge till Very cold (I chilled it in the fridge for an hour and in the freezer for a half an hour -- just make sure it is super cold for the next step even if it means allowing the mixture to chill overnight). Now when the mixture is cold, simply pour it into an ice cream maker through a strainer to get rid of and vanilla bits and freeze according to your ice cream makers directions. It is really that easy. Remember that you can add in fresh fruit or caramel or cookie crumbs, anything your heart desires into the ice cream maker during the last minute or two of churning.
*As a note, don't add the vanilla before the recipe says just for convenience. The reason that it is added after the cream and sugar is warmed is because warming the vanilla would cause the alcohol and thus the flavor, to be eliminated from the mixture because alcohol evaporates when heated...just a tip from pastry school that blew my mind when I first heard it!
I served the ice cream with the strawberry rhurbarb compote that you may remember from a previous post and it was just delicious.
That is quite the switch from working over a stove with hot oil making doughnuts to making ice cream! That sure looks inviting.
ReplyDeleteWe still have to get out and buy an ice cream maker.
hot day? Here in Cowtown it will be a steaming hot 12°C or all of 54°F when today reaches the maximum temp for this Sunday... not really ice cream eating temperature. Grrrrrr.
ReplyDelete