I have my new KitchenAid Ice Cream maker attachment chilling in the deep freeze. What recipe should I make for the first batch?
Vanilla!
3 cups cream, 1 cup milk, 2 eggs, 1 c sugar.
Cook the eggs, sugar, and milk over low heat, stirring with a whisk the whole time, until thickened. Remove from heat, whisk in the cream, and chill. Add vanilla. Freeze.
Add how much and what kind of vanilla? I have a few beans, and some homemade extract.
I just got one a couple of weeks ago
I’m looking forward to trying this one
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cinnamon-Ice-Cream/Detail.aspx
This looks like a good source (I made the raspberry one)
Mango! One or two diced ripe mango’s.
Banana and cinnamon, yum.
IME, 1 T of the extract, plus the 1 bean’s worth of scrapings. I love vanilla, and don’t think most recipes that call for it use quite enough.
I made awesome fudge walnut a few weeks ago - use the vanilla recipe above(minus the bean, and not necessarily as much vanilla), plus melt one jar of really good hot fudge sauce into the base when you’re cooking it.
Add the walnuts when the ice cream is almost frozen.
This was actually an improvisation, since I had a guest coming who loves fudge walnut, but I didn’t have quite the right ingredients. It was quite possibly the best fudge walnut I’ve ever eaten.
**badbadrubberpiggy **has it. If you’re going to use your beans, you’d cut it lengthwise and cook it with the milk to extract the flavor and the tiny seeds, and scrape afterwards. If you’re using homemade extract, you have to go by how it tastes as you add it. I like a lot of vanilla, but my daughter thinks I add too much sometimes. Just go by what you like.
I just got my attachment a couple of days ago, too! I also got the book “The Perfect Scoop” by David Lebovitz. I don’t know what kind I’m going to make first, probably start with vanilla, also. I’m tempted to make this easy lemon one first, though. From David’s book, but the recipe is from the late Barbara Tropp. Mr. HP had this in her restaurant many years ago and says it’s wonderful.
2 lemons
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (from about 3 lemons)
2 cups half & half
pinch of salt
Zest the two lemons directly into a food processor or blender. Add sugar and blend until the zest is very fine. Add the lemon juice and blend until the sugar is completely dissolved. Blend in the half & half and salt until smooth.
Chill for one hour, then freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s direction.
On second thought, I just bought some beautiful lemons yesterday. That’s it! I’ll start with lemon!
Ooooh, that lemon one sounds great. I think I might have to make some this weekend.
Here’s a good one I’ve made recently, for cherry buttermilk sherbet:
2 cups cherry juice (I used one that was just cherries, no sugar or anything added)
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup sugar
Mix the juice & sugar in a saucepan and heat until the sugar dissolves. Cool for 4 hours or overnight, then blend with the buttermilk and freeze in your ice cream maker.
Ginger works surprisingly well as an ice cream flavour, and you only need about a teaspoon of powdered ginger added to a standard vanilla recipe.
My peanut butter ice cream causes weak knees (and heartburn). Use about 1/2 cup smooth PB for the same volume as above.
My copy of The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz arrived today! I was not expecting it until Thursday. I am leaning against vanilla as the first batch because It is not one of my favorite flavors. I bought the beans, and the complexity of their flavor is winning over, but I still think I want something else first. If the first batch turns out less than stellar and it is vanilla, I will have another bad association with vanilla. I am leaning toward chocolate with frozen strawberries for a mix-in.
Sometime after the first batch, I will be making avocado ice cream with candied bacon. David Lebovitz has some very good ideas about flavors and mix-ins.
Oh! I just recalled my idea for coffee ice cream! I have a recipe that calls for cooking a half cup of coffee and a half cup of cream in a double boiler and then squeezing the result through cheese cloth. The result is a very intensely flavored cream to be used in flavoring mousse, but I am sure it would flavor ice cream just as well.
badrubberpiggy–I’m definitely putting your cherry/buttermilk on the list. And lee–looks like great minds think alike!
The Ben & Jerry’s recipe book is great, too.
Ok, The custard is cooling. I made it with KellyM; there is plenty for two people to do with all the stirring and chopping etc.
**
KellyM** took one cup of ground Bustelo espresso, and mixed it with a cup and a half of cream in the top of a double boiler. She then heated this up until we could see that the oils were coming out of the coffee and mixing in with the cream. We had a strainer line with cheese cloth over a two cup measure and poured the mixture into that, allowing gravity to draw the cream through the strainer. When it was mostly done, she used the cheese cloth to put pressure on the grounds and press out cream until one cup of the liquid was in the cup. Any extra that could be pressed out was saved to the side for later use. We then used that cup of coffeed cream in David Lebovitz’s chocolate ice cream recipe in place of the cup of cream that is not boiled with the chocolate. I tasted it and it is not very sweet, but it is sweet enough for me. For the chocolate, I used 19 Dove dark chocolate promises. For the cocoa I used 2 tablespoons of Hershey’s Special Dark and one table spoon of Hershey’s natural cocoa. I like how the two taste together better than the Special Dark tastes alone.
Lebovitz’s book is fabulous. I made his cheesecake ice cream just a few hours ago. I had some cherries that I cooked down with water and sugar to a thick syrup and added that into the base for cherry cheesecake. Very tasty. I’ve done it with strawberries too. I think chocolate raspberry cheesecake ice cream is next.
One key concept in making ice cream is butterfat. Keep an idea on how much butterfat you’re including in your overall recipe.
Here’s a handy table from Wikipedia:
Heavy whipping cream - 36%
Whipping cream or Light whipping cream - 30–36%
Medium cream - 25%
Light, coffee, or table cream - 18–30%
Half and half - 10.5–18%
Whole milk - 3.25%
2% or Reduced fat - about 2%
Semi-skimmed - 1.5–1.8%
1% or Low fat - about 1%
Skimmed milk - 0.0–0.5%
So you can adjust your butterfat content by mixing together different dairy products. Keep in mind the amount of other ingredients you’re adding. Vanilla ice cream, for example, is going to be mostly just cream and sugar - the flavoring is a very small ingredient. But suppose you’re making strawberry ice cream - if you add a cup of strawberry puree, you’re essentially displacing a cup of cream. You’re going to need to up the butterfat percentage of the remaining cream to compensate for that.
And don’t go overboard. If you add too much butterfat you end up with sweet frozen butter.
As others said, it depends on what kind of vanilla you’re using. If it’s standard vanilla extract, one teaspoon per quart of ice cream is a good rule of thumb. But don’t add extract too early - you should have completed any cooking steps before adding extract.
If you’re using vanilla beans, you want to add them in as early as possible. Generally you want to let them soak in the cream for a few hours. And heat is now your friend. Beans are more variable than extract but figure about one or two inches worth of bean is good for a quart.
Another tip. If you’re going to use something like crumbled oreo cookies or blueberries as an ingredient, stick them in the freezer first. If you add them to the base at room temperature, the mixing will often end up smashing them into a puree. Plus adding frozen ingredients will lower the temperature of the base.
I found my favourite ice cream base, lush and creamy but not greasy, at an Irish website, here: Ice Cream – Ice Cream Ireland. Several interesting flavours as well.
Thanks for the link. Now I get to figure out grams, etc. 