Day 36 - Vanilla Ice Cream

With the ice cream maker burning a hole in my consciousness and that sorbet tasting so great, I couldn't stop thinking about what frozen treat I could make next! Hence -

Vanilla Ice Cream (p. 468)

As Martha points out, this is no ordinary ice cream. It's not enough to use just heavy cream and sugar. No. This is a frozen custard, aka French ice cream, so we need to get six egg yolks in there! Holy cow....

Making this ice cream is pretty straightforward. The one thing I did that I'd never done before was tempering yolks. Basically, the cream and milk and vanilla bean and half the sugar get heated on the stove. The other half of the sugar gets whisked with the egg yolks. Then you slowly add a ladle full of the cream mixture to the yolks, whisking all the while. Then, repeat with another ladle full. This ensures that the yolks don't cook like yolks usually do. You can't barrage them with heat, or they'll clump up. So you basically dilute them with some of the cream mixture, which then makes them safe to add to the rest of the cream mixture to heat some more.

I'm a little confused about the extra added corn syrup (three tablespoons at the end). I thought that the cream mixture tasted plenty sweet... But we're following the plan here, so I go along.

The end result is super rich and, as I suspected, super sweet (too sweet for me). It is delicious, but it is so much richer than I'm accustomed to, particularly since my ice cream eating is usually restricted to Tasti D-Lite and Edy's nonfat, no-sugar-added flavors. The vanilla presence is significant, or maybe it just seems that way because I can see the seeds. I can't help thinking that a scoop of tart, fruity sorbet would make a great partner to a scoop of this vanilla ice cream. (Hmm, I'm getting an idea for tomorrow!)

Jeff: A
Martha: A- (I'm still cranky about the corn syrup)

Until we eat again....