Vanilla Ice Cream to End One Sentence Blogging Week

For the past week, I've been writing one sentence posts in an effort to avoid blogging burnout. There were actually several of us participating in this one-sentence challenge and the effort was spearheaded by my friend Nancy of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs, who explained the challenged and listed the participants here. I know I'm not the only one who thought one-sentence blogging rocked! as several of us have been tweeting about this fabulous experience today. It was liberating but also challenging - how best to convey everything you want to say with so few words? Blogging will resume as usual tomorrow but I think there's a good likelihood that one-sentence week may be reprised at some point in the future :)

I thought a simple recipe for perfect vanilla ice cream would be a great way to end one-sentence blogging week. This recipe comes from David's Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. It's a Philadelphia-style ice cream, which means it's not made with an egg-yolk custard base, just some milk, cream, sugar and vanilla. Though I've gotten pretty good at tempering eggs and heating custards, sometimes it's nice not to have to go to all that trouble for homemade ice cream. The only change I made to the recipe was to substitute vanilla extract for the vanilla bean since I didn't have any on hand. The verdict? This is terrific vanilla ice cream! The texture was very creamy and I loved that the ice cream didn't freeze to the point of being rock-hard. I think our favorite vanilla is still the Sweet Melissa brown sugar vanilla, but this one is definitely another go-to vanilla recipe!

Vanilla Ice Cream

from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

3 cups heavy cream, or 2 cups heavy cream and 1 cup whole milk

3/4 cup sugar

Pinch of salt

1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pour 1 cup of the cream into a medium saucepan and add the sugar and salt. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the saucepan and add the pod to the pot. Warm over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved.

Remove from the heat and add the remaining 2 cups cream (or the remaining 1 cup cream and the milk) and the vanilla extract.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator. When ready to churn, remove the vanilla bean, rinsing and reserving it for another use, and then freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.