Home-made vanilla ice cream a la "A Country Cook´s Kitchen"

So yesterday was the BIG day, where I used my brand new Nemox ice cream machine for the very first time in my little kitchen. And it was a good day to do, as it was grey and rainy outside, so what better way to comfort yourself inside hidding away from Autumn making ice cream !!!

And it was your decision, what the very first ice cream to be produced on my ice cream machine should be vanilla ice cream. The ice cream election in September was actually a very, very, very close run up among the three proposals in form of

• the classic ice cream - the most selling ice cream flavour around the world - vanilla ice cream
• liquorice ice cream with liquorice ripple - new classic Nordic flavour within any food item
• cherry ice cream a la Klidmoster

I received a total of 25 votes. And I know, what some persons were voting both in the Danish and English vote, and this is OK with me, as long as you just vote. The votes were given like this:

• vanilla: 9 votes
• liquorice: 9 votes
• cherry: 7 votes

So it was actually a tie between vanilla and liquorice. Some of  my colleagues (being very technical food people) taking part in this vote, all more or less voted on vanilla, so I/they could get an understanding of my ice cream machines capabilities. So therefore I set my heart on making vanilla ice cream, as I already have shared a liquorice ice cream recipe with you. Even though, that my good friends in Horsens are very un-happy with this decision of making vanilla ice cream. I actually received a comment from Horsens demanding a recount of all the votes !!!

Even the recipe on the vanilla ice cream has been a MEGA HUGE discussion point at work between my colleagues and I. I have found this vanilla ice cream recipe in the brilliant cooking book called "A Country Cook´s Kitchen" by Alison Walker. However, according to my colleague this recipe is having too little amount of milk solids non fat combined with a too high level of dry matter and no magic powder inside (functional food ingredients) !!!! So here in October I have decided to make two vanilla ice creams, this recipe here and a correct designed vanilla ice cream made with kind help by my work colleagues !!!

This ice cream is described as being RICH, and this is term fitting perfect to so many areas of this ice cream. The taste is wonderfully rich (the best tasting vanilla ice cream I have ever had), the calorie content is rich (1000 kJ/100 g) and the fat content is rich (almost 17% fat).

Home-made vanilla ice cream a la "A Country Cook's Kitchen": 4-6 servings

• 1 vanilla pod
• 300 g milk, 0-3% fat - just use your normal milk
• 4 egg yolks
• 125 g sugar
• 300 g dairy whipping cream, 38% fat

1. remove the seeds from the vanilla pod. Add both vanilla pod and seeds to the milk in a small cooking pot. Heat this vanilla milk over medium heat until hot, but not boiling.
2. Remove the vanilla milk from the heat and it let stand cold for minimum 30 minutes, so the vanilla can infuse the milk.
3. Whip together egg yolks and sugar in a mixing bowl until it is a white thick mass. 
4. Remove the vanilla pod from the milk.
5. Add the vanilla milk into the egg-sugar mix and mix everything well together.
6. Pour this mix into the cooking pot over low heat, stirring it constantly until this mixture has thickened enough to coat the back of the cooking spoon. Be careful not to overheat this mixture, as it will curdle.
7. Transfer the mixture through a sieve into a clean bowl, which is stored in the refrigerator until it is cooled down.
8. Stir the whipping cream into the mixture.
9. Pour into your ice cream machine and freeze it into ice cream.
10. Store the ice cream in the freezer.