Vanilla Bean Custard Ice Cream

 Ingredients:
-2 1/4 C Milk (I use whole milk)
-1 1/4 C sugar
-2 Vanilla Beans, split and insides scraped out
-6 egg yolks
-3 C heavy whipping cream

Heat the milk, sugar, and vanilla beans (both the scraped out bits and the beans themselves, which you will later remove) on medium or a little lower until thoroughly warmed.  Remove the vanilla bean pods with a spoon or similar.  Alternatively, if you want to make sure the caviar or whatever you want to call the vanilla bits you scrape from the pod break up appropriately, you can mix them in with your sugar before getting it all in the bowl to start. Most of mine broke up just fine, but I did notice a few clumps still here and there.

Whip up the egg yolks (I just whipped mine up a bit with a fork but you can be really effective and whip them up really well with a mixer).  Add a little of the heated mixture at a time, very slowly, to temper the eggs, mixing it thoroughly while adding it in.  You don't want the eggs to scramble.

After you have mixed in about a cup or so, add the egg mixture back in to the heated mixture, whipping really really well while you add it back in.

Heat the mixture on medium low, stirring very well. You will want to stir up the mixture and continue heating until it thickens enough to coat the spatula.  You should be able to wipe your finger across the back of the spatula and it hold in place without running.

Remove it from the heat.  Get a metal bowl or your ice cream canister and pack it in some ice in another bowl or in your ice cream container.  Add the cream to the chilled bowl.

Add your custard mixture to the cream and mix well to incorporate. Chill it for a while in the fridge, or pack in more ice and stir in the container to cool it.  Once chilled, freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

Now, mine came out pretty yellowy, mostly because I use jumbo eggs so the yolks were big and I did not whip a whole lot of air into mine.  I had the goal in mind of making a rich custard-like ice cream, and I think this accomplishes that.

I got these super cool containers on amazon.com which they sell in cups, pints, quarts, etc.  They are waxed paper just like a normal ice cream container and you could dress them up with all kinds of cute labels and such for gifting.  I am really excited about these little things because these are a lot easier to store in my freezer, and I think they will be better than the thin plastic containers I had to use before.  I got 25 containers for $20, and it shipped prime!

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