Ice Cream (we all scream for it!)

Ice Cream Cone with Many Colored Scoops Shaffer & Smith

This past weekend, I had to make four gallons of ice cream for a huge pool party (to which few people showed up, so I have tons left over). I learned a lot from reading and experimenting, so here are my general observations on ice cream:

The more fat, the better and creamier. Also, the more loaded with calories it will be! As I had to make a choice between fat and sanity, (this is for four quart machines), here's my take, after a number of experiments:

• One half gallon of half and half
• Six eggs
• Three cups of sugar
• Flavoring
• Milk to fill up to the fill line

Natural flavorings win over artificial ones, time after time! The four flavours I made were vanilla (from vanilla beans), chocolate, mint chocolate chip, and coffee. For chocolate I used cocoa powder and for coffee, a pound of coffee beans (you can reuse the coffee beans for coffee later). For the mint I used a handful of mint leaves and infused them in the cream. Then I refrigerated dark mint chocolate bars overnight and chopped them in a hachoir. Another way would have been to melt them and add as the ice cream churned to create ribbons.

One other thing I did was to splurge on organic sugar. This is not the white, refined, stuff, but golden. Brown sugar would have been better in the chocolate and coffee, but the organic sugar was perfect in the vanilla and mint chocolate chip, adding just that extra layer of flavour.

Of course I would have loved to use David Lebovitz's formula, but . . . 24 egg yolks for a gallon of ice cream? I don't think I have that many soufflés in me to use up all those whites--not to mention that unless I get a hand-cranked machine, I don't think I can afford the calories!

(Next time, what I learned about custards!)