How To Make Ice Cream

Last week on the Real Simple Facebook page (you’re a fan, right?), we alluded to the fact that we had something fun planned to celebrate National Ice Cream Month. Well, here’s the big reveal—for the month of July I’ll be blogging all about homemade ice cream—including recipes for classic and unexpected flavors, homemade ice cream toppings, and visits from some special guests.

I started making ice cream last summer, and because there’s no way I need to eat all the flavors I’ve made by myself, I started bringing it into the office, much to the delight of my co-workers. Some of the flavors I’ve made so far: cherry, vanilla (several different versions), salted caramel, pistachio, mint chocolate chip, olive oil, peach, Nutella, peppermint (my only real failure thus far), frozen yogurt, green tea, and bourbon butter pecan.

To kick things off, here’s my favorite vanilla recipe, adapted from Ina Garten’s recipe.

Easy Vanilla Ice Cream
Makes 1 quart

Ingredients:

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean, scraped

Directions:

Combine cream, milk, sugar and vanilla in a saucepan and heat until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and stir in to the cream mixture just before removing from the heat.

Pour into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Chill in the refrigerator or in an ice bath until completely cool.

Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (If you don’t have an ice cream maker, check out this post from TheKitchn on how to make ice cream without one.)

Store in an air tight container and freeze for an additional 2 hours.

Here’s the batch I made over the weekend:



Gathering the sugar, vanilla extract, and vanilla bean.



I’m looking forward to experimenting with different ratios of milk and cream to make this recipe a bit healthier.


I think vanilla bean seeds are actually quite pretty in spite of how messy they are.



Everything is mixed, cooked, and ready to chill. Are you ready to see the final product?


There’s the final vanilla. So creamy and rich!

Check back in on Friday for the next installment. Oh, and that image that introduced the post? It’s one of the flavors listed above. Can you guess which one?