... ok, maybe not EVERYONE's excited about the fireworks... poor scared Cleo.
Most importantly though... cookouts!! This year I'm going to a cookout hosted by my next-door neighbor, and he's making something amazing. A red velvet cake, shaped to look like a steak cooking on a bed of cupcake coals! Amazing. So insanely cool that any dessert I could provide would be superfluous. In discussing his cake with him, we decided that it might be fun to have some ice cream to go along with this fantastic creation... but clearly, no ordinary ice cream would do.
It had to be red, white, and blue.
This gave me the opportunity to try the Cook's Illustrated vanilla ice cream recipe, which I've been meaning to try for a while. It's one of those ice cream recipes where you start with cream and eggs and sugar, turn it into a custard, then turn that into ice cream. Historically I have just done ice cream from cream and sugar, so this I found very exciting.
And you know what? It is very exciting. It's delicious! I can definitely taste a difference! SO, happy 4th of July to you all, and if you want to make some ice cream, let me recommend this... only slightly adapted from the Cooks Illustrated recipe.
Vanilla Ice Cream
Ingredients:
1 3/4 c heavy cream
1 1/4 c milk
1/2 c + 2 T sugar
1/3 c light corn syrup
1/4 t salt
6 large egg yolks (save the whites! you never know when you might need them! and they freeze well)
2 t vanilla
Place an 8 inch square baking pan in the freezer (or if you're going to red-white-and-blue your ice cream, use 3 jars or bowls)
Combine cream, milk, 1/4 c + 2 T sugar, corn syrup, and salt in a medium pan. Bring up to 175 degrees over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. It took me about 5 minutes and the mixture should be steaming steadily.
In the meantime, whisk yolks and remaining 1/4 c sugar until smooth.
Then slowly whisk in about 1c of the cream mixture into the egg yolks to loosen them, and so they don't cook too much when you add them to the rest of the cream.
Return this mixture to the pan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and reaches about 180 degrees. This took me about 5 or 6 minutes.
Remove from heat and pour into a new bowl to cool until it's not steaming anymore, about 10 - 15 minutes (I put mine in front of the A/C to expedite the process!)
Take one cup of custard and put it in a small bowl. Cover it an the bowl of the remaining custard with plastic wrap and put the small bowl in the freezer and the big bowl in the fridge.
Leave them there at least 4 hours -- I left mine in overnight.
Scrape the frozen custard into the cool custard. This can be tricky if you, like me, left your custard in for more than 4 hours. To loosen the frozen custard, make a warm water bath and stick your bowl in it for just a minute. It'll pop right out!
Stir until the frozen custard has dissolved into the cool custard. I used a potato masher to help speed things up.
Then add the 2 t vanilla to your custard and stir well.
Get your ice cream maker cranking! You want your ice cream to be about 21 degrees and to look like soft serve ice cream, about 15 - 20 minutes.
Yum. Ice cream.
Transfer to your frozen jars or pan and cover with plastic wrap (or the lid of the jar). If you want to dye your ice cream, now's the time! Place some dye in the jar and stir! Then shake the jar up a little bit to distribute the dye evenly.
Leave it in the freezer for about an hour to give it time to set up a little bit.
Now coax the ice cream into a pastry bag and pipe it into little ramekins (who are we kidding? jars!) one color at a time. Red! White! Blue!
If you're not doing the jar method, just transfer the ice cream to an air tight container and try to get as many air bubbles out as you can.
Freeze until it firms up, at least 2 hours or up to about a week.
Enjoy!
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