Vanilla Ice Cream

My first attempt at making ice cream did not go so well. I chose to ignore the directions that came with my ice cream maker and follow some random blog's instructions (blog shall remain anonymous), something I will never do again. Maybe this works for some people, but it did not work for me.

And for the record, I'm using the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker that I received this past Christmas! It's super easy to use and I highly recommend it.



Vanilla Ice Cream



Ingredients

2 cups of whole milk
1 cup of heavy cream
3/4 cup of sugar
1 vanilla bean









Instructions

*the KitchenAid ice cream maker needs to be placed in the freezer the night before making ice cream!

First I combined the whole milk and sugar into my mixer, put the speed on low, and mixed for about 5 minutes. It isn't easy mixing sugar into cold milk!

After the sugar mixed and with the mixer still going I added the scraped vanilla seeds and cream, and left it to mix for another 5-10 minutes, and turned off the mixer once I saw the milk start to froth. I was on the verge of making whipped cream! Something that wasn't on the agenda for the afternoon.

Now here is where the plan deviated and that other blog failed me. I emptied the ice cream batter into some tupperware and put it in the freezer to freeze overnight. The next afternoon I pulled the frozen mix from the freezer and left it on the counter for about 45 minutes so it could soften enough for me to pour it into the ice cream maker. I had a few issues with the ice cream maker trying to churn slushy mix. It simply did not want to do it! I ended up cutting all the chunks into bite-sized pieces so it would not get caught in the churner. I left it on for about 30 minutes, used a rubber spatula to scoop the dessert back into the tupperware, and placed it in the freezer again for a couple hours before tasting.

I'm not sure what exactly happened during the pre-churn freezing process, but I do know that the final texture was very icy. Also, while tasting, I noticed there were small, chewy globs of...something. They tasted like the ice cream so it wasn't entirely bad. Maybe during the pre-churn freezing process some of the fat leeched from the cream?

Just a note: unless I'm specifically going for some super-creamy Haagen Dazs or french vanilla (which would require egg yolks), I intend to keep the cream and milk ratio as it is in this recipe. I'm going for more of a Breyer's texture. Don't get me wrong - I love all ice cream and all sorts of textures and I do intend to branch out and try different kinds eventually.