So we are going through a ‘heat wave’ in Southern Ontario, in honour of this I am posting a nice cool you down recipe. There is nothing fancy about what I am planning on making, plain old vanilla ice cream. But I am trying one of the recipes I found for Philadelphia, or American Vanilla ice cream.
A lot of ice creams are delicious and rich, but they are a pain to make because it requires a custard, I hate making custard, takes too much time out of my day when all I want is some ice cream to sandwich between two delightful homemade chocolate chip cookies. In warm weather custards are also a pain because they require the stove on for an extended period, not what you want when you are already overheating.
What I found in the back of my ice cream book, which I some how missed over the last two years, was a recipe for Philadelphia no cook ice cream. The no-cook is a misnomer, as it does involve cooking, it requires that you heat the milk and the vanilla bean in order to infuse the flavour of the vanilla bean into the milk. But this requires minimal heat and time so I will let it slide.
Your can make this without an ice cream maker, it just requires you to stir the ice cream every now and then while it is freezing. It won’t be as smooth as a machine made ice cream, but if you like your counter space it is better than storing an ice cream maker.
Ingredients
(makes ~1L)
1 Vanilla Bean
375mL Milk
50g Caster sugar (I’ll be honest I use regular sugar :))
125mL Sweetened condensed milk (chilled)
250mL Whipping cream (chilled)
pinch of Salt
Tools
Ice cream maker
Pot
Paring Knife
Wooden spoon
Directions
- Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and heat with the milk and sugar, stirring occasionally, to just below boiling point, allow to cool, then chill.
- Remove the bean and scrape out the seeds, adding them to the chilled milk. Cover and chill in the fridge
- Add the chilled condensed milk, cream and salt. Mix together, then still-freeze or start the ice cream machine and pour in the liquid.
- Leave to churn for 20 minutes or until the ice cream has the consistency of very soft whipped cream.
- Quickly scrape into plastic freezer boxes and cover with wax paper and lid
- Freeze until firm, ~1 hour.
There you have yummy vanilla ice cream. While this wasn’t my favourite vanilla ice cream, it was definitely good. I found this one to be a little sweet for my taste, but I blame that on the condensed milk. The next time I am going to try to modify this recipe and leave out some of the sugar. Or I might get really brave and replace the condensed milk with something else 🙂
