And I wonder why I've gained 20 pounds in 4 years...

I've been on an ice cream kick this summer and it seems as though this cute little phase is going straight on through fall. Yikes.

This summer I made blackberry vanilla ice cream, mint chocolate chip ice cream, cherry basil ice cream, pomegranate sorbet (for many reasons it turned out disastrous, but it's worth another shot), peach ginger ice cream, and most recently, apple pie ice cream (served in mini pre-made graham cracker crusts and topped with caramel).

Last week I made the peach ginger ice cream, mixing a teaspoon of Trader Joe's ginger spread (which, coincidentally, is also delicious on top of brie, but that's beside the point) with my cut up peaches.

For all of the recipes, I've essentially done the same thing: used The Best Recipe's vanilla ice cream as a base (without the vanilla in most cases) and cooked down some fruit and then combined the two prior to freezing.

The Best Recipe's vanilla ice cream recipe:

1.5 cups heavy cream

1.5 cups milk (I use non-fat just to cut some calories somewhere)

4 egg yolks (I save the whites to make omellettes later)

3/4 cups sugar

First, combine the cream, milk, and 1/2 cup of the sugar in a pan and heat on the stove until it reaches 175 degrees.

In a separate bowl, combine egg yolks and the remaining 1/4 cup sugar and whisk together.

Once the milk/cream mixture has reached 175, ladle a bit of it into the egg/sugar mixture and whisk. Add more milk/cream little by little until it's a soupy consistency, then slowly add the egg/sugar/milk/cream mixture back into the remaining milk/cream on the stove. (Hopefully this makes sense. This is obviously my writing, not the Best Recipe's writing.) This is the ice cream base. Continue heating it (while stirring) until it's 185 degrees, at which point the eggs are cooked and you can stop. If you've made a fruit mixture to go in it, this is the time to add it.

Once it's reached 185, remove the pan from the heat and put the mixture into an ice bath to cool. After it's cooled to room temperature or so, cover the bowl and stick it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight until it's sufficiently cold. Once it's thoroughly chilled, you can then make the ice cream in the ice cream maker.

Fruit Mixture

1-2 cups fruit

Water

Sugar

Spices or herbs

A little of whatever else you feel like adding

This is much less exact than the previous recipe. What I've done is just taken a cup or two of fruit (blackberries, cherries, peaches, apples) and either cut them up or put them whole in a pan on the stove over medium heat. Add whatever you want (a little cinnamon and nutmeg for the apple pie ice cream, a teaspoon of ginger spread for the peach ice cream, a little currant vodka for the blackberry ice cream, and about 6 basil leaves for the cherry basil ice cream) and reduce the fruit down over low-medium heat until it's bubbly and gooey, making sure that there's a little bit of liquid in the pan so it doesn't scorch. Once it's cooked down, remove it from the heat and allow it to cool a bit before adding it to the ice cream base.

I wish I had more pictures of my various ice cream flavors, but alas, I am a fatass and I ate it all.