When I was a kid, homemade ice cream was a treat but also an endurance event similar to a triathlon. Instead of swim, bike, run, it was more like ice, salt, and churn. The family would shuttle ice and salt into the old ice cream maker while we took turns hand cranking the machine for what seemed like hours.
These days I can't believe how easy making homemade ice cream is. My parents gave us a Cuisanart ice cream maker (Model Ice 20) two years ago and it is so easy to use even a caveman could do it....providing he had electricity of course. No salt. No ice. No hand cranking.
Alexis made Toll House chocolate chip pan cookies (recipe on their bag) and then this super easy vanilla bean ice cream.
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups half & half
1 14 oz can of condensed milk
1 vanilla bean
Mix the first three ingredients. Split the vanilla bean, scrape out the vanilla into the mix and discard the bean casing. Pour the mix into the pre-chilled machine and turn it on. She ran it in the ice cream mixer for about 30 minutes.
I don't eat much dessert at all, I just would rather have seconds or a heavy beer like Newcastle Brown (what I call dessert beer). But this was easy and oh so good.
The fork dives right through the ice cream and then drives into the cookie base...yum! The ice cream was light and creamy with that real vanilla pow in the kisser.
Don't worry, I'm still alive and aliens haven't kidnapped me. Grill programming to return in the next post ;)