mint ice cream

Freeze all the components of the ice cream maker overnight, except for the motor of course, that would be ridiculous. 

* 1 pint Half & Half

* 1 pint heavy cream

* 2 vanilla beans scraped 

* 5 jumbo egg yolks or 6 regular egg yolks

* 1/2 cup cane sugar

* 1 package mint

The mint was the type that comes prepackaged found among the fresh herbs in the produce section of regular grocers. It's marked .66 oz / 18 grams. It wasn't enough. I was afraid it would be too much mint but it turned out to be not enough. Double would be fine.  Muddle the mint, scrape the vanilla beans, mix it all into the combined H&H and cream along with the scraped out husks of the vanilla beans to extract the last trace possible out of it all. Let this steep, infuse, at the very least overnight.

[note to self: use more mint. Muddle it more thoroughly.  Steep for at least a full 24 hours, not just overnight. Longer would be fine.]

I learned that tempering the egg is a needless step.  It's possible to beat the yolks thoroughly with a portion of the H&H + cream and all the sugar,  then bring everything including the remainder of the H&H + cream up to temperature together. Whisk and stir until just before boiling. Strain and chill. I use an ice bath to hasten but that's probably not necessary.

Chill the mixture in the refrigerator or the freezer to just short of freezing. This takes the burden off the machine and hastens the process. Do not let ice crystals form. The whole point of an ice cream machine is to produce the tiniest ice crystals possible. If the crystals are already started, then they'll be built upon as the mixture chills further and that's bad for ice cream. 

The best the machine can do is produce soft ice cream. Scoop it out into another container and freeze further for a few hours at least, to harden it. Then you'll have something that's more difficult to scoop but will not melt within minutes once served at room temperature. 

Next time I'm going to soak orange or lime zest along with extra mint to make it even better.  ♫ Oh I'm a maniac, ♪Ma-ni-ac on the floor, ♬ and I'm make'n ice cream like I never made before ...

Frozen custard, actually, but who cares?