Lets start by saying how nice and lovely and sweet Jan is. While I was in Spain, taking exams (better not talk about those grumble), he went to Aldi and bought me an Ice Cream Machine! Yesh! All for us! He told me he had bought me a surprise that day, and I wondered if it’d be the ice cream machine I had been showing him for the previous week. But I didn’t ask, wanted to be nice ;) In the end he told me, and I was already looking forward to make ice cream!
Fast forward to last friday (the previous was around the 20th June). I finally had time and peace to make the base of the ice cream. I decided on plain vanilla, because you can’t go wrong with vanilla ice cream. I followed the recipe that came with the ice cream machine, and got a nice vanilla custard that I let chill for a full day – while the ice cream machine bowl froze. Then I set up the machine, poured the custard, set it to “soft serve” and let it work for 30 minutes. Lovely result, a sweet intoxicating vanilla icecream. Simply delicious:
You can see how creamy and soft it is in those pictures. And yes it has vanilla speks from using a real vanilla pod and scrapping all the seeds so the ice cream would taste like real vanilla and not those chemically loaded ones they sell out there.
Basic Vanilla Ice Cream
Ingredients:
- 3,5 dl milk (I used half-skimmed)
- 2 dl cream (I used 30% fat)
- 1 vanilla pod
- 150 grams sugar
- 3 egg yolks
Make it:
- The day before you want to make ice cream – yes it’s time consuming in the waiting department, it is definitively no instant gratification here – make your custard, and put the ice cream machine bowl to freeze. You want a good 24 four hours of cold in that!
- In a deep sauce pan, heat up the milk and cream, with the vanilla pod. Make sure to slice it in half lenghtwise and scrap all the seeds. Once it’s reached boiling point, remove from the heat and let cool with the pod still inside.
- While the milk cools down, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until foamy and creamy. When milk is warm, remove vanilla pod and add milk to eggs slowly while whisking non-stop to keep the custard from going, well, custardy and lumpy before time.
- When the eggs have been warmed up by part of the milk, add the egg mixture to the rest of the milk and heat the pan again. Do not let it boil and stirr constantly. When custard has thickened, about 10 minutes, remove from heat, pour in a bowl, and cover.
- Chill your custard to fridge temperature, ideally over night (that way the machine has less work to do!). Once everything is nicely cold and chilled, assemble your machine, pour the custard in, and let it do its thing for around 30 minutes.
- Dive in, enjoy.
Yield: One liter of frozen orgasmic vanilla ice cream.