Custard Ice Cream Base - ☺♥T

Food Nirvana Ice Cream recipes generally have not used a Custard Base, for in the past I have preferred Ben and Jerry's® simple ice cream base, both for simplicity and flavor. But times have changed and the heavy cream we can buy in super markets now stinks ... it was changed from 40 percent butterfat with no other added ingredients to 36 percent butterfat with thickening agents like carrageenan. That really ticked me off because it impacts how well the cream works when making home made ice cream. Specifically, some amounts of too thickened crap can form during the churning and freezing of the ice cream. That is disgusting and entirely a matter of supplier greed.

You can still get good heavy cream directly at some dairy farms, but that limitation is ridiculous. Also terribly expensive.

My response was to make a very good custard base, which involves some filtering through a fine sieve to eliminate any congealed material, which also happened to eliminate the artificial thickener problem. I found a number of good custard base recipes and the one below looked to be the best ... modified, of course, by me to include certain important specifics, like cooking temperature, that were missing or somewhat off in the Internet recipes I found. The recommended number of egg yolks to be used was anywhere from two to eight. As I use jumbo eggs the recipe below indicates that four egg yolks should be used. You can vary the number based on the type of eggs you use and your preferences for smoothness/richness of the ice cream. I am highly pleased with the amount of egg yolks I used.

I declare complete and perfect success with this recipe. It is fabulous. What I did was cross reference it in all of the appropriate Food Nirvana ice cream recipes so readers have the choice of using the Ben and Jerry's simple ice cream base, or, this new custard ice cream base. I think you know which one I will be using.

Ingredients:

2 cups of heavy cream

1 cup of whole milk

2/3 cup of sugar

1/8 teaspoon of fine sea salt

4 jumbo or 5 extra large or 6 large egg yolks

Your choice of flavoring, like 2 tablespoons of pure vanilla extract

Directions:

Heat the cream, milk, sugar and salt in a heavy bottom saucepan, on medium-low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar completely, while raising the temperature to 140 degrees F (use an instant read thermometer). That will take about 4 to 5 minutes.

Remove the saucepan from the heat.

Whisk the yolks in a separate bowl. Whisking constantly, slowly pour about one cup of the hot cream mixture into the yolks. Then, gradually whisk that yolk and cream mixture back into the saucepan with the rest of the cream mixture.

Return the saucepan to medium-low heat and cook while stirring until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (175 degrees on an instant-read thermometer). Then immediately remove the saucepan from the heat.

Strain the custard base through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow the custard base to cool to room temperature.

Chill the covered custard base in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or even overnight. Note that you can keep the custard base refrigerated before use for up to three to four days if it is well covered.

Add your choice of flavoring ingredient(s) to the custard base, per whatever ice cream recipe you are making. Stir as necessary to mix. Note that some ingredients aren't added, depending on the recipe, until the ice cream is pretty well frozen in the next step, like butter brickle chips or Oreo cookie pieces, etc.

Churn and chill the flavored custard base in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Serve the ice cream directly from the ice cream machine for soft serve, or store it in the freezer in a sealed paper or plastic container until needed, to have a very rich tasting and smooth texture ice cream.