Homemade Ice Cream!

I went to a neighbor's yard sale today and she was selling an almost-never-used Cuisinart ice cream machine. It was like kismet, the law of attraction, good karma coming my way. For $10 I was the proud owner of the same Cuisinart ice cream machine I was checking out at Williams-Sonoma just the day before. If you imagine it, it will come.

So then I got home and had my machine but didn't have a clue what to do with it. So I googled "David Lebovitz Ice Cream" and found a bunch of his recipes from his new ice cream recipe book, The Perfect Scoop. I decided to start simply, so I did the vanilla bean recipe. It was so easy, it couldn't have been easier. Now this ice cream isn't as creamy as the custard based ice creams will be (hopefully) when I make those. This is more of a Breyer's ice cream: milk, cream, sugar, vanilla beans...voila. It's really good, better than many store bought ice creams because it is so flavorful with real vanilla, and there is no goopy chemical added for extra fluff.

If you have a maker, try this out. If you don't, go to a yard sale and get one for a song!

Ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk or half-and-half
¾ cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
¾ tsp. vanilla extract

Steps
Pour 1 cup of the cream into a medium saucepan and add the sugar. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod into the saucepan and add the pod to the pot. Warm over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved.

Remove from heat and add the remaining cream, the half-and-half, and the vanilla extract.
Chill mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, for at least eight hours or overnight.

When ready to churn, remove the vanilla pod (reserve the bean for another use), then freeze in your ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

This content is from the book The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz.