Hello all,
I was thinking I’d make some vanilla ice cream to go with the punkin pie this coming Thursday. I was at the grocery store the other day and they had vanilla beans on sale for $3 each(!) so I stocked up. I’ve only ever made vanilla ice cream with extract, never with the beans themselves.
Do I need to do something special? The jar says to open the pod and scrape out the insides, then simmer in milk… but I’ve never had any luck simmering milk or cream, it always breaks on me. Plus, my base is a no-cook recipe. Can I just grind the whole thing with a coffee grinder and add it to the sweet cream base? Or do I only use the guts?
Yes, you can use whole ground vanilla bean. I have a cookie recipe that uses the whole bean this way. It’s probably the best thing to do, since you have a no-cook recipe, as it’s hard to scrape out the seeds from a vanilla bean if it hasn’t been softened in hot liquid.
One problem you will face is that the vanilla flavor won’t spead through the ice cream very well once you have frozen it. You want the ice cream base to have a vanilla flavor, rather than having unflavored ice cream with little bits of highly-flavored vanilla bean spread throughout. It would help to steep the ground vanilla bean in the milk or cream for several hours before you make the ice cream. As an alternative, you might also want to steep the bean in a small amount of high-proof liquor (like rum or vodka) - the alcohol will help extract the vanilla flavor. Don’t use too much alcohol, though, or your ice cream won’t set.
BTW, it takes a lot of boiling to get cream to separate. Milk curdles fairly easily because it contains a fair amount of protein, but one can boil heavy cream for quite a while before it breaks.
Here’s my recipe for Philadelphia style vanilla ice cream.
Get nine cups of cream - use a mixture of heavy and regular cream, depending on how thick you like your ice cream.
Get two or three vanilla bean pods.
Heat up the cream in a pan until it’s warm. But you don’t need to simmer it.
Split the vanilla beans in half lengthwise. Scrape out the tiny black seeds and oil from inside. Throw everything - seeds, oil, and shells - into the cream.
Stir in two and a quarter cups of sugar.
Stick the pan of cream in the fridge. Let it cool off for at least eight (or more) hours. This is important.
Take the pan out. Fish out the shells and toss them.
Pour everything else into your ice cream maker. Makes a gallon of ice cream.
Tell people not to freak out over the little black specks in their ice cream.
Thanks guys! The recipe I have (don’t have it in front of me at the moment…) is out of the Ben & Jerry’s book. It’s something like 2c heavy cream, 1c 1/2 &1/2, two eggs, 1c sugar. Mix and pour into ice cream freezer. I’ll add a tablespoon of vanilla extract so that the base is flavored, as well.
Nemo–your recipe sounds fantastic, but my freezer only holds about a quart of finished ice cream, and only does one batch before it needs to be re-frozen. It sounds like I need a second ice cream freezer ;0).
Maybe you should take him out to a nice dinner, ask him about his work… you know, try to get to know him a little bit before you go jumping in the sack.
(Check out this link and re-read the thread title if you don’t get it… 
)
That was cold, jackelope. Too cold.
As cold as making vanilla ice cream…