98 In The Shade

I'm writing from the safety of my basement. Temperature hit 98 F at around 5 o'clock this evening. Yuck.

So I made two types of ice cream in the last two days. Yesterday I made Alton Brown's Mint Chip Ice Cream recipe. Note that the online recipe has an error. It says to use 1 teaspoon of peppermint oil but in the show he says to use peppermint extract. Basically whichever flavoring you use, make sure to add it to taste. The recipe should also state that you need to whisk the eggs and sugar till they are very light in color and creamy. It's a lot of whisking but it's important.

The other recipe of his I made was his Serious Vanilla Ice Cream recipe. This one is a "Philadelphia" style ice cream that does not use eggs. Here is a similar recipe that also includes a short and to the point video.

My biggest learning experience was with the ice cream maker itself. I have Cuisinart model like the one shown in the video above. It's very simple to use and clean, but it's performance is not strong. Here are three things you should do to make the ice cream come out well:

1) The "Freezing" drum has to be as cold as you can get it. Store it in the coldest corner of your freezer. You also need to leave it in there for at least two days between batches.

2) Get your ice cream mix as cold as you can before putting it in the machine. You should leave the mix in the fridge overnight even then try to get it down to below 40F. I did this on my second batch by putting the mix in the freezer, stirring occasionally and checking the temperature with an instant read thermometer.

3) Don't fill the drum more than half way. The less the better.

In my attempts I wasn't able to get the ice cream to freeze fully in the maker and so the final texture was not as good as I had hoped. Still everyone ate the ice cream so it was not bad. :)

I'm going to try making the vanilla ice cream again and see if I can get better results by following the three rules above. I'll let you know what happens.

Oh, the other thing I learnt is that it's a lot cheaper to buy ice cream than to make it....