Everyone should make their own ice-cream!

My husband has an idefatigably sweet tooth, a liking for the finer things in life, and a tendency towards the artisanal.  These have recently combined and resulted in the production of home-made ice-cream.  He's been making it every Friday night for the past month or so, and it's AMAZING. 

I've been meaning to post about it for ages, because I think EVERYONE should make their own ice-cream.  It's easy, cheap, fun to do, has absolutely no additives or preservatives or other nasties, and is much nicer than even Haagen Dazs or Ben and Jerry's.  And - and I feel quite evangelical about this after going into Lakeland and seeing the prices - you don't need an ice-cream maker.  Particularly not one that costs £209.99.  I nearly died when I saw that!

Here's how much it costs and how to do it.  Alastair doesn't like having his photo taken, so I offered to wash up for him as he was making Friday night's ice-cream and sneakily snapped away as he did so.

Ingredients and Cost
300ml milk (50p for a pint of Tesco's whole organic milk)
Seeds of 1 vanilla pod (£1.69 for a Tesco vanilla pod, or free if you have a bottle of vanilla essence in the cupboared)
4 large egg yolks (£1.45 for 6 Tesco free range eggs)
125g caster sugar (about 25p or £1.99 for a 1kg bag of Tesco golden caster sugar)
300ml double cream (£1.25 for 300ml of Tesco organic double cream)
Total - £5.14 for at least 600ml, probably more like 700ml when you count the egg yolks as well as the milk and cream.

Method
1.  Bring your milk and vanilla gently to the boil over a low heat, then remove from the heat.

2.  Beat the egg yolks and the caster sugar in a large bowl.  They go lovely and creamy.

3.  While beating, add the milk.

4.  Return to the pan, stir over a low heat until the mixture is the consistency of double cream and starts to coat the spoon (if you stop here, you have just made custard without the Bird's powder).



5.  Pour in the cream and mix.  If you were adding another ingredient, say chocolate to make chocolate ice-cream or fruit puree to make strawberry/raspberry/whatever ice-cream, this is probably when you'd do it, although it does depend on the recipe.

6.  Decant the mixture into any kind of bowl/tub/freezer-proof receptacle and leave to cool overnight.

7.  Stir a couple of times the next day, then enjoy any time you fancy ice-cream.  I am unable to comment on the expiry date as it's so delicious it's always eaten way, way before it even *thinks* of going off!

And meanwhile, here is one he made earlier.  Peanut butter and salted caramel ice-cream. 

  

Words are not sufficient to describe the deliciousness!