Settling Into Routine

My husband and I, celebrating 19 years of marriage this past August.

I have been living fast and furiously the last couple of weeks.  After ending the Summer on a high note of great family time, we reluctantly crawled into another school year.  Our kids have a mish-mash of classes so getting into a schedule takes a couple of weeks.   The last scheduling hurdle is adjusting to the 6:30am band class which starts this coming week.

Really, though, it is nice to have the kids focused on their classes and into normal sleep routines.  I like having an agenda each day, even when that agenda is to do nothing.  That is how this weekend went- yea!

Ok, I didn’t actually do nothing, I just let the day dictate what I got accomplished.  Mostly, I folded laundry but in between loads, I looked through magazines.  A recipe for honey vanilla ice cream jumped out at me.  I am a sucker for honey and it was a custard recipe.

I have been procrastinating making ice cream even though I had a 1/2 gallon of heavy whipping cream in the fridge.  Costco has the best heavy whipping cream and it is pretty economical to buy it in a 1/2 gallon, but what do you do with 1/2 gallon of heavy whip?  Fortunately the best heavy whip makes the best ice cream.  Since I started doing this, I have a hard time eating store-bought ice cream.  I am rather lazy in getting it done though, which is probably better for my waist line.  Still, someone bought the cream so I had to make the ice cream.

When Costco had  a coupon at the beginning of summer for a Cuisinart counter ice cream maker, I knew I had to have it.  It ended up being $25.  My daughter bought one to put in her hope chest.  I had been using an old wooden one but it was loud and took a lot of work.  Lucky for me it was damaged when I flooded our basement earlier this year.  (That’s another story.)

I cooked the custard before church so by the time we got home, it was ready to throw in the pre-frozen container.  I set up the machine and the ice cream was ready in about 15 minutes.

The recipe is as follows:

3 c heavy cream
1 c milk
1/2 honey
1 vanilla bean, split
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 lg egg yolks

Heat the first 4 ingredients in a saucepan over med heat, about 5 min.  Whisk 4 yolks in a heat proof bowl.  Drizzle 1 c hot cream mix while continually whisking egg yolks.  Add yolk/cream mix to remaining cream in saucepan and heat until slightly thickened, about 5 min., whisk continually while heating.  Pour custard through fine sieve and scrape seeds from bean into mix.  Add vanilla extract.  Cool at least 1 hour.  Follow instructions of your ice cream maker.

Like I said, this machine took a whole 15 minutes or so to harden the custard.  The cooler the custard, the faster the maker will work.  My only complaint is that 4 cups of milk  really doesn’t make that much ice cream.  Funny how the thought of drinking a glass of milk does not appeal to me but frozen, I could eat four cups.

I am sorry I cannot give credit to where I found this recipe.   I thought it was either Real Simple or Country Home but I couldn’t find it on their websites.  It never occurred to me I would be sharing about making this recipe.

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