Vanilla Ice Cream

Vanilla Ice Cream

Why would anyone living in the upper Midwest make vanilla ice cream when the temperature outside is only in the single digits during the day and below zero night? Truthfully I have no reasonable explanation except this. My local grocery store had half and half on sale for seventy nine cents per pint and I couldn’t help myself from buying some.

In July I bought my husband the ice cream attachment for our Kitchen Aid mixer. He’s made a lot of good ice cream since then, but for this batch I wanted to try my own hand at it using half and half and vanilla bean paste. We loved this ice cream, and wish we had made twice as much. It was smooth and creamy, and we loved the flecks of vanilla from the vanilla bean paste.

Vanilla Ice Cream by Sue at Basically Baked

3 cups half and half
3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 T. vanilla bean paste ( I used Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Bean Paste, purchased from King Arthur Flour)

Whisk the eggs in a heat proof bowl and set aside. Heat half and half and sugar in a heavy saucepan over medium until hot. Whisk a small amount of the hot mixture into the eggs whisking constantly, and then whisk the egg mixture into the half and half in the saucepan. Continue to heat this mixture stirring constantly until the mixture reaches 185 degrees. Strain the mixture, and then cool completely in the refrigerator.

When the mixture is completely cool, churn the mixture in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s directions. Cure the ice cream in the freezer for one hour before scooping.

Blueberry Gelato!!

I’m so excited to share this with you.  The picture doesn’t do this justice. It is so good. I love gelato and no one in my area makes it. The first time I had gelato was in Germany in 1979. It was years before I had it again but I never forgot that first taste. When my daughter lived in Arizona we found an awesome gelato shop there, but she no longer lives there so I have no where to get my once or twice a year gelato fix.

My husband recently received an ice cream maker attachment for our Kitchen Aid stand mixer. We have one of the big hand crank ice cream makers, but we rarely use it. It has to be quite the occasion to justify that much manual labor, and all of the fuss with ice and salt. He has made two batches of ice cream already with his new toy. One batch of vanilla and one batch of Heath Bar Crunch. They were both great!!

Now that he’s broken it in I figured it was my turn to have a go at a frozen treat, so I’ve been searching for a gelato recipe. I really wanted to find a recipe without eggs. I’ve ordered some books from Amazon, but they haven’t arrived yet, so in the meantime I searched the Internet. I finally found this recipe and figured I couldn’t go wrong. Especially when the grocery store had the blueberries on sale buy one get one free!

This gelato really hit the spot. The fruit taste is very intense and the texture was very pleasing. I will definitely make this again, but can’t wait to explore more recipes over time.

Update: The gelato texture suffers when completely frozen after being in the freezer overnight. To revive the gelato microwave it on high for 30 seconds and mash it with a spoon. Give it a few more seconds in the microwave if needed or let it sit for a few more minutes and mush it around some more. It’s almost as good as it was fresh out of the ice cream freezer.

Blueberry Gelato (Adapted from this recipe.)

2 pints of fresh blueberries

the juice of 1 lemon

1 c. of whole milk

3/4 c. sugar.

Puree the blueberries and the lemon juice with an immersion blender or in a regular blender. Cover and thoroughly chill in the refrigerator

Combine sugar and milk and heat over medium low heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Cover and chill this in the refrigerator.

Before adding to the ice cream maker, whisk together the milk mixture and the pureed blueberries. Process according to the directions for your ice cream maker. In our ice cream maker it took about 12 minutes.