I scream, you scream...for Lemon Basil Ice Cream

Hello Robyn's faithful blog readers!

My name is Inez and will be guest blogging today. A little about me: I'm your modern day homemaker, I love food, I talk a lot, and I watch lots of reality TV. 

Still with me? Awesome. 

A few weeks ago, I sent Robyn home with lemons and she made an amazing lemon sorbet. I was inspired by her blog post and knew I wanted something equally fabulous. 

So, there are some things that I always have an abundance of at home.

Complaining children.
Shows to watch on the DVR.
Dishes that need to be washed.
Lemons.
And Basil.

So I thought, hey, two birds one stone, make Lemon Basil Ice Cream. I googled. I found this site, and it seemed easy enough. I didn't have enough heavy cream, so I adjusted slightly to 1.5 cups of heavy cream and 1.5 cups of milk.

Before you start, make sure your ice cream maker base has been in the freezer at least 12 hours.

Ingredients

1.5 cups heavy cream
1.5 cups 2% milk
1.5 cups basil
1 tsp. lemon zest
1 pinch of salt
5 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar

I started by adding the cream, milk, basil, lemon zest, and salt to a medium sized pot. I turned the heat to medium low and stirred constantly. Two things here, 1) I wanted to get the mixture just to boiling then turn it off, and 2) I didn't want the bottom to burn. I was cautious with my heat setting and it took about 7 minutes to get to a boil. As soon as it boiled, I immediately turned off the heat and let the mixture infuse for 20 minutes.

While that mixture sat, I separated my eggs. This recipe, like most ice creams only calls for the yolks. That doesn't mean you should throw away your egg whites! There are so many things you can do with them. I chose to make some macaroons (see below) with mine.

Once separated, add sugar and whisk, whisk, whisk. The mixture becomes very creamy and will have a pretty light yellow color to it.

Set aside.

Put the mixture in a blender and blend.

The next step is the trickiest and could ruin the whole process. Temper your eggs. Add warm liquid to the sugary eggs a little at a time while whisking constantly. Adding too much too quick, not whisking, or having too hot liquid, will result in scrambled eggs. Which would be great if we weren't making ice cream. Once the eggs and cream mixture are fully whisked together, add the whole mixture back to the pot over low heat. Stir constantly. At this point, you're thickening the base. Stir constantly so it doesn't scorch the bottom. You'll know it's ready when you can coat the back of a spatula or spoon with the mixture. For added reassurance, run your finger through the mixture on the back of the spoon that you coated, and if the track you made stays, it's plenty thick.

Once it's ready, it's not ready. Let the mixture cool down. You don't want to add super hot liquid to your ice cream maker. I let the mixture sit for about 15 minutes. It was in that time I made the macaroons that I'll talk about soon.

Once cool, I added the mixture to the ice cream maker and let it churn away. I allowed the mixture to churn for about 45-50 minutes. The consistency should be somewhat thick and creamy. If it's runny, keep churning. Don't forget that the base should be in the freezer until about 1 minute before you need to use it. If it's not frozen and super cold, it won't make ice cream. Once it was done churning, I put the mixture into these containers that I love and use for everything. Make sure you allow at least 12 hours to freeze.

While that churned, I decided to give this Coconut Macaroon recipe a try with the leftover egg whites I had. The recipe was super simple, and only required a wooden spoon and some elbow grease. These were delicious and gone by that night.

This recipe can be made from start to finish (minus preheating the oven) in about 22 minutes.

This is a good, go-to, easy, delicious recipe to have on hand, and deserves it's own blog post! Soon, promise.



Back to the ice cream. Here it is in all of it's glory. I won't lie to you. I have mixed feelings about it. It's immediately sharp in taste, but creamy, and then you get a hint of sweet. It's not as sweet as you normally imagine ice cream to be. I think next time I would strain the mixture to not have itty bitty pieces of basil throughout and maybe some sweetened condensed milk just to make it a tad sweeter.

Enjoy!