mix, mix…stir, stir

Vanilla ice cream is about the pleasure of tasting pure ingredients. It is the naked truth of ice cream. There are no ripe berries, rich chocolate ribbons, or crunchy mix-ins to hide behind, so if the ingredients aren’t top notch, the ice cream will be, well, rather vanilla. Though I dressed my dish of vanilla ice cream up with a papaya accent and some candied nuts, this vanilla ice cream is anything but hiding.

It’s 103 degrees F in Seattle today and 99 degrees F in my house at the moment. Somehow writing about ice cream seems like it should make me feel cooler, but it’s not working. Weather this hot is as befuddling to Seattleites as snow is. Having a stash of freshly made vanilla ice cream in the freezer from this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe has made for many brief escapes from the heat, so thank you to Lynne of Café Lynnylu for picking such a timely recipe for us to make. You can find the recipe on her blog if you need to create a summer escape of your own.

I grew up eating ice milk. I have such fond memories of ice milk with the sweet icyness that melted so easily on my tongue.  Ice milk, which is defined as having less than 10% milk fat, has been replaced by modern-day low fat ice creams. These new fangled low fat ice creams are designed to mimic the texture of full fat ice cream making them a completely different experience from eating ice milk. The imprint of ice milk on my young palate makes me biased toward lighter ice creams, which is one of the reasons I really like this recipe. Dorie uses equal parts cream and milk and 6 egg yolks. I have made many recipes with a higher proportion of cream and up to 9 egg yolks, and find them to be too heavy.

Have you ever wondered what the key is to making really luscious smooth ice cream at home? The length of time it takes to freeze the ice cream is key. I learned this from Kate Zuckerman in her book The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle. She is a big proponent of ice cream freezers that use a frozen canister rather than the more expensive machines with built-in cooling mechanisms. This is because they are so cold they get the job done in about 15 minutes, and the faster the freezing time the smaller the ice crystals, which results in smoother ice cream. The machine that I own has a built-in compressor and takes at least twice that long to freeze a pint. One tip she gives that I employ is to churn less ice cream at a time which makes it freeze faster, so I broke this recipe into two batches to freeze it.  Obviously having a really well chilled base is important, but by letting the base rest in the refrigerator overnight it becomes slightly thickened and will have a nicer texture once frozen.

A number of years ago I came across a recipe for Five Herb Ice Milk that was published in Gourmet magazine. The combination of herbs, cream (or milk in this case), and sugar is shockingly delightful. It was a jump-up-and-down-around-the-kitchen-squealing-with-joy type of flavor discovery.  If you are an ice milk fan you will love the consistency of this, and if you aren’t, just infuse the herbs in your favorite ice cream base recipe.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 84 recipes completed 137 to go!