Vanilla Ice Cream & Loaded Banana Bread

I haven’t been up to much in the kitchen lately. And I guess it took so long getting back to my blog this time because I was hoping to have more to say. But not really.

What I have done is a very yummy vanilla ice cream with strawberries and a banana pecan chocolate chip bread. Both are quite good if-I-do-say-so-myself.

So the first one, the ice cream, is a recipe that I borrowed from a friend and tweaked soooooo, I guess it’s kinda my recipe. But I like it so much I’ll share it with you. Now it’s not strawberry ice cream it’s vanilla with strawberries in it. And very good. I was going for strawberry ice cream but I didn’t get to macerate the strawberries long enough. I didn’t really have a time limit I just really wanted ice cream really bad so I guess I should say I didn’t let them macerate long enough :) Now if you do what I did here and just fold the strawberries into the ice cream at least cut the strawberries smaller then I did. I don’t know what I was thinking but smaller next time, Stacey, smaller.

The banana pecan chocolate chip bread is a hit so far. This I made just because I needed a stress outlet at the time and I had all the ingredients. I followed the Joy of Baking recipe and added 1 cup of chocolate chips, which maybe next time I would do a half cup. And I also added one extra banana but just sliced up, not mashed. And, oh yeah, I added some freshly grated nutmeg too. Maybe a pinch. So it is a loaded loaf of banana bread. And I think that is what I shall name it: Loaded Banana Bread. Sounds like it needs to be soaked in some kinda liquor though. Another lightbulb! I might have to work on that…..

Vanilla Ice Cream

1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
¾ c egg yolks ( I ended up using 6 but I had extra large eggs on hand)
½ sugar
1 T vanilla paste

- Mix together egg yolks and sugar in a metal bowl and set aside.

- Mix together heavy cream and milk in a pot and put on stove to scald. Don’t bring to a boil, once you see bubbles around the edge you are good to go.

- Temper the hot milk into the egg yolk mixture by slow adding the hot milk as you are whisking the egg yolks.

- (This is my extra little step) Put the metal bowl filled with the ice cream base and set over a pot of boiling water. Constantly stir with spatula, scraping sides of bowl to ensure eggs won’t scramble. Do this just until you notice it to thicken. This is just like making an anglais but I’m not looking for that kind of thickness. Remove from heat and add vanilla paste.

- Allow to cool completely. Pour mixture into another metal bowl that is in an ice water bath. Don’t stick the metal bowl that you just used on the double boiler. It will just melt all the ice immediately.

- At this point follow the instructions for your ice cream machine. Once the ice cream comes together and looks like ice cream scrape the ice cream into a freezer container and now is the time to fold in the strawberries if you so want to. But this ice cream is very good just as vanilla ice cream.

- If you want to enjoy it now as soft ice cream I wouldn’t blame you. At least help yourself to some now then freeze the rest for dinner later. Then a mid morning snack then a pre dinner snack… You get the idea :)