Ice Cream Test Kitchen Part 2

For those of you who have been waiting in eager anticipation since Monday, the exciting conclusion of the Great Ice Cream Experiment!

It was time for a new game plan. First off, I bought a big bag of normal sugar, to be used instead of the expensive organic stuff I usually keep on hand. If this was going to be done as often I suspected it might need to for it to be right, I didn't need to be spending extra money per batch just on the sugar. Second, I skipped the "basics" recipes, because they called for creating custard without egg yolks, which I suspect has a lot to do with creating a binding cream. If anyone has ever created a fairly solid ice cream without the yolk, let me know in the comments. I struggled a bit with recipes calling for whole vanilla beans, I didn't want to water down my custard by subbing in vanilla extract, but when I found whole beans it was like $10 for a vile of 3 beans. Serendipity smiled on me though, Megan, a girl I grew up with, shipped me "America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook" as a wedding present. It came with a recipe for chocolate ice cream that, thank god, called for no vanilla bean.

I indulged a bit with a pricey half pound bar of chocolate for the custard because I learned long ago that all chocolates are not created equal and since this was the main flavoring element for the ice cream, I wanted it to be good. This custard was a lot more work then the peach had been. I had to heat the milk and cream to hot, but not boiling, melt the chocolate, but then cool it before I added the egg yolks and sugar, and add a cup of the milk mixture to the chocolate/egg mixture to "temper" it before I could combine the whole thing. So many precise instructions leave many, many places for it all to go horribly and irreversibly wrong. It's such a nice ice cream maker, I wanted to try my very best to make it not explode somehow. Luckily I managed to navigate my way through it without too much difficulty. After the custard chilled completely for three hours, it was the moment of truth, and, in the spirt of Princess Diana 161 (though way less funny), I am presenting an Epicurette in New York multi media first, so you can all see for yourself how it went.

I promise the videos will get better as I learn how A) the camera, and B) iMovie works. If you view the video in YouTube, you will notice the Epicurette In New York now has it's own, subscribeable YouTube Channel, for all future videos!

The next morning, after a night of freezing, it was even better, perfectly formed and scoopable ice cream!

I am a genius, an ice cream making goddess! This must be what Athena would feel like if she could make ice cream. Now I am ready to take on Salted Carmel Ice Cream! And this fall, Pumpkin Ice Cream! And Apple Cider Ice Cream! I'm not getting ahead of myself, right?