ice creamed: part 1

It sounded odd to me to say the other day that I had never made ice cream from scratch before. Never! The simple reason being that I never owned an ice cream maker before, but didn't seem like much of an excuse. I don't know why I never bought one. Gene has had one for a couple of years and has made countless excellent gelatos, and every time I would taste one I would say "I really need to get an ice cream maker!". Add to that Burt's updates on the myriad unusual flavors that Chris has cooked up and I have had serious home made ice cream envy. So I finally did it, and I decided to be a purist with my first batch out - Vanilla Bean Ice Cream.



And there it is, perhaps one of the most expensive single ingredients out there, but also the most worth it. Look how many lovely little seeds that one pod provided:



The recipe I used was - against all my normal instincts - straight out of the user's manual that came with the machine. This was a custard-based ice cream, and I wanted to do it perfectly, so I spent some time straining the custard before cooling:



Smooth custardy goodness:



Coming up in part 2, the machine gets its first use, I watch it like it's magic, and J-Cat eats too much ice cream. Stay tuned!