Thankgiving blessings to my US friends!

Up here in the Great White North, it's just an ordinary Thursday. This meant that I had time to fool around with my ice cream maker again!

Today's experiment was no low-cal, fruity dessert, but the real thing. French Vanilla Ice Cream. The recipe came from the instructional booklet for this appliance of gluttony. To make 8 cups of ice cream requires 5 cups of cream (an equal mixture of whipping cream and half-and-half), 8 egg yolks, some sugar, salt and vanilla. Now, the recipe booklet says that any type of milk/cream can be used but I decided, in the name of science, to stay true to the recipe. My only nod to low-fatness was substituting table cream for whipping cream.

The process was similar to that for gelato: the ingredients are mixed and heated to almost-boiling, chilled, and then churned. And then packed and frozen for a couple of hours. In this case, I had to beat the yolks with the sugar, heat up half the cream, add it slowly to the yolks with the mixer running, and then put everything back on the stove and heat to almost-boiling. Then add the rest of the cream, salt, and vanilla.

It's in the freezer now, firming up for dinner. I had a taste of the almost-finished product and could feel the arteries hardening in my chest.

There's a recipe for Caramel Pecan Ice Cream that's calling my name....