I've made vanilla ice cream before, but I was intrigued by the recipes for Jeni's ice cream that I've seen floating around the web of late. Jeni is an artisan ice cream maker based in the Columbus, Ohio area, and is also author of the cookbook Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home.
I first decided to try my hand at making one of Jeni's ice cream recipes after salivating my way through a number of posts on Sheri's blog, where she posted a number of links to Jeni's ice cream recipes. I decided that I would go with plain ol' vanilla bean ice cream for my first try. Unlike the ice cream recipes I've made in the past, this recipe lacks eggs, and uses cornstarch and cream cheese as thickeners. Jeni's ice cream recipes also suggesting freezing the ice cream for an additional four hours after making it to create a firm texture; I think it would be fine to serve it soft from the ice cream maker. (That and maybe I'm just not patient enough to wait an additional four hours to eat my ice cream!) Regardless of whether you wait to try it or not, the resulting ice cream is thick, creamy, and full of delicious vanilla-bean flavor. It's tasty on its own, but it doesn't hurt to add a little homemade hot fudge sauce and sprinkles on top, too.
You can find the recipe for Jeni's Vanilla Bean Ice Cream on Food & Wine's website. The Food & Wine article also includes recipes for pistachio ice cream, mint ice cream, lemon-blueberry frozen yogurt, strawberry frozen yogurt, melon sorbet, and sour-cherry lambic sorbet. Looks like I've got a lot more experimenting with my ice cream maker to do!
The Jeni's method is growing on me - probably because I'm lazy. I love not having to strain out eggy bits!
ReplyDeleteI haven't made the vanilla yet, but I just got the Bi-Rite Creamery book so Jeni gets shelved for a little while. :)