Homemade Ice Cream

Hey all! I know, I know. Severely lacking in posts lately. Doing the best I can just to keep up with life right now. Same week I bought my ice cream maker, I had someone make a huge fraudulent charge to my bank account and I've honestly been putting up with taking care of that for the last three or four weeks. Not to mention, it's been a little too hot to do a whole lot of cooking so I really haven't been doing much more than heating up some leftovers. What I HAVE been doing is making ice cream.

For the longest time I always wanted an ice cream maker but just never bought one for myself. about a month or so ago, I purchased the new Cuisinart ICE-21 automatic frozen yogurt, ice cream and sorbet maker. Along with that, I purchased the Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book. I'm so glad I bought the Ben and Jerry's book because they have three different recipes for sweet cream bases, two that don't include eggs and one that does. I've never tempered eggs and quite frankly, the thought of doing so makes me nervous. They do warn that ice cream made with the no egg sweet cream base doesn't store well so you need to be prepared to eat it all. I've made ice cream 3 times using this method and honestly, it stores pretty well for a couple days, at least. It really all depends on how comfortable you are with leaving it in the freezer and how much ice cream your family eats.

The sweet cream base I make consists of 2 cups heavy/whipping cream, 2/3 cup of half and half and 3/4 cup of sugar. So simple and easy peasy, I promise. It makes one quart of ice cream which is perfect because my Cuisinart only makes a quart and a half.

If you're new to making ice cream and you're like me, afraid to temper eggs...start out with the sweet cream base I mentioned. Just make sure that you chill it for an hour or so or even overnight while the freezer bowl freezes. I did that the first time I made ice cream..made the base the same night I stuck my freezer bowl in the freezer and put the base in the fridge to get nice and cold. That's the thing with making ice cream, all the ingredients need to be cold. The ice cream maker comes with an instruction booklet but I'll give you the basics myself. Note: I don't claim to be any expert on making ice cream, this is just what works the best for me and may work for you.

Freeze your freezer bowl anywhere from 16-24 hours. As long as you don't hear any of the cooling liquid sloshing around between the double insulated walls, you're good to go. Make sure all ingredients you're adding are chilled, I recommend putting together the base the day before or allow yourself an hour or two before you need to make the ice cream if it's for a party or event to chill the mixture in the fridge. If you're adding chunks of anything(cookies, candies, nuts etc), they should be added 2-5 minutes before the ice cream is done otherwise, they will just sink to the bottom and not be mixed in. Most ice cream makers taker 20-30 minutes and the ice cream will be soft. You need to freeze it for about two hours to make it a bit harder.

The three ice creams I've made are fresh strawberry, vanilla bean and pistachio. Fresh strawberry was fabulous and so pretty. I had to mash up the strawberries so they turned the sweet cream base a gorgeous pink color and all the chunks of strawberry floating around were fabulous. The second ice cream I made was the vanilla bean. This was my first experience working with actual vanilla beans so I was a little apprehensive but I wanted to get that gorgeous white ice cream with little flecks of vanilla bean throughout so I grabbed a pod, split it with my knife and used a large spoon to scrape the beans out. The smell is absolutely gorgeous and my fingertips smelled like vanilla for days! I loved it. And today I made the pistachio ice cream. The biggest pain in the butt for me was shelling the pistachios since I couldn't find a cheap bag of shelled nuts. Sorry, but I wasn't paying $15. It killed me just to pay $6!

The Ben and Jerry's book does not have a recipe for pistachio ice cream so I sort of followed the recipe in the booklet that comes with the machine, only I used the sweet cream base from B&J and then sort of made it up as I went along and it came out fabulous. It smells delicious and it tastes even better. Making your own ice cream allows you to control what goes into it and how much of a certain thing you add. Don't be afraid!

My grandmother has requested butter pecan ice cream next so I will have a post containing the recipe and pictures. :)

My only gripe with this ice cream maker is the noise is makes but y'know what? Who really cares! It churns out beautiful, delicious ice cream and for that, I can put up with a little racket.