I scream, you scream...

...we all scream for Ice Cream! For Christmas (or my birthday...they are so close together I can't remember which) my mother in law gave me the ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer. I'd had a little ice cream maker that a friend gave us but it just never seemed to work. So I was excited to try the Kitchenaid attachment, as I'd heard it was pretty good. Boy is it! I love this thing. So far I've only made two batches of ice cream but I'm keeping the bowl permanently in our extra freezer so I can make ice cream whenever I want. It comes out in a nice soft serve consistency and then you can harden it up by freezing it (over night is best...4 hours or so will get it a little firmer, but not to the hardness of say grocery store ice cream). Here are the two ice creams we've tried so far. Both were really good. We used full fat ingredients in these but I hope to start trying to do some lighter ice creams soon.

Vanilla Ice Cream

1 cup milk

a pinch of salt

3/4 cups sugar

1 vanilla bean (I used a Madagascar vanilla bean, which is more recommended for ice cream than a Tahitian bean)

2 cups heavy cream

5 egg yolks

a few drops of vanilla extract

Heat the milk, salt and sugar in a saucepan. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds into the milk with the tip of a paring knife. Add the bean pod to the milk. Stir together the egg yolks in a bowl and gradually add some of the warmed milk, stirring constantly as you pour (this is called tempering...so your eggs don't scramble). Pour the warmed yolks back into the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heat-resistant spatula until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula. Strain the custard into the heavy cream. Rinse the vanilla bean and put it back into the custard and cream to continue steeping. Chill thoroughly, then remove the vanilla bean and freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Source: David Lebovitz via http://crumblycookie.wordpress.com/

Oreo Cheesecake Ice Cream

1 cup sugar

4 oz cream cheese at room temperature

1 large egg

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

3/4 cup milk

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

10 Oreo cookies, crumbled

Beat the sugar and the cream cheese together until smooth and creamy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Set aside. Bring the milk to a boil in a heavy saucepan. Slowing beat the hot milk into the cheese mixture. Pour the entire mixture back into the pan and place over low heat. Stire constantly with a whisk until the custard thickens slightly. Be careful not to let the mixture boil or the egg will scramble. Remove from the heat and pour the hot cheese custard through a strainer into a large, clean bowl. All the custard to cool slightly, then stir in cream. Cover and refrigerate until cold or overnight. Stir the chilled custard, then freeze in your ice cream machine, adding the crumbled cookies to the machine when the ice cream is semi-frozen. Allow the machine to mix in the cookies.

Source: The Ultimate Ice Cream Book by Bruce Weinstein