Buttermilk icecream

I have never made icecream from scratch. I've read about homemade icecream in magazines, heard many delish, innovative flavors from my forum friends. Making icecream also sounded pretty complicated, like one of those tasks you need to be "ready" to accomplish.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

My friend and I spent all of 20 minutes making the icecream base, let it chill and then poured it in the icecream machine and that thing did all the work! I'm serious, there was nothing to it. The two things that required skill in that entire process was (a) separating egg whites from yolks and (b) Slowly adding the warm cream mixture to the eggs and whisking. Adding it too quickly could end up with scrambled eggs. Not the result we are after.

We made a simple buttermilk icecream (not even vanilla flavouring as you will see) which turned out to be smooth and creamy with a little tang from the buttermilk. You can go crazy with toppings but we kept ours simple with fresh strawberries and a homemade nutella cookie. Nobody got seconds. It was that good.

For a second during the icecream making process I felt like I was in the Iron Chef America kitchen with Alton screaming his head off -- "There goes the icecream machine!!!!"..... except we didn't have any wild ingredients going into the machine... just your basic basic. :)

[Based on a recipe from Epicurious]

Ingredients:

-  1 cup whipping cream
-  6 large egg yolks (save the egg whites for breakfast the next day)
-  1/2 cup sugar
-  1 cup cold shaken buttermilk

Directions:


1.  Bring whipping cream to simmer in a heavy saucepan.

2.  Whisk egg yolks and sugar in a medium bowl to blend.

3.  Gradually whisk hot cream to egg yolk mixture over a fine mesh sieve. Do not be in a hurry and pour it all in 2 seconds!! 

4.  Return mixture to saucepan and stir over medium heat until custard mixture thickens slightly, about 6 minutes. DO NOT BOIL.

5.  Strain over a fine mesh sieve into a bowl.

6.  Stir in one cup cold buttermilk. Refrigerate custard until cold, about 2 hours.

7.  Process in icecream maker. Follow instructions of your icecream maker to know when it's done. 

8. Serve with any topping you like.. we chose fresh strawberries.