By Erin
For homemade vanilla ice cream! A few weeks ago, I wrote about making chocolate ice cream. This week I tried my favorite, vanilla. I’m going to start with the important things: making homemade ice cream is about the love of cooking, the love of making it, and the love of the process. is not easy, and its not cheap if you buy good ingredients. You’re also not making gallons in a home ice cream maker. (I use the Kitchenaid attachment for my mixer.) Most recipes call for you to make custard, first, which is delicate and time consuming. But the end product is so, so good.
For vanilla, I tried this recipe from Epicurious. Naturally, I doctored it. On the advice of my friend, Wendy, who had made it before, I cut down the sugar. I used only 3/4 of a cup. I also COULD NOT find vanilla beans. So I finally gave up and used the fancy vanilla I’d purchased from my local green market. The bottle said 1 tablespoon equals 1 bean, so I followed that measurement. It worked!
This is a good recipe to start with, because its super straightforward.
I learned three things:
1. Listen to the directions when it tells you to completely chill the custard. If you don’t, it will not churn. I learned this the hard way and had to start over.
2. It was delicious, but I will definitely try to find vanilla beans to get that real vanilla bean flavor. I hear Whole Foods sells them.
3. Make sure you churn it enough – I could have let mine churn for a few more minutes. The texture was almost there…but not quite. A few extra minutes would have made the difference.
Next up: Mint Chocolate Chip for my hubby. Are you going to be making your own ice cream this summer? What recipes have you tried?
http://arizona-vanilla-company-llc.amazonwebstore.com/12-lb-Madagascar-vanilla-beans/M/B000C5UYA4.htm?traffic_src=froogle&utm_medium=CSE&utm_source=froogle
there are a couple of places online that sell vanilla beans in bulk for a pretty reasonable price. i used a site like this last time i made kahlua.