We all scream for ice cream!!

Yeah for summer! That to us equals lots and lots of ice cream 🙂

We were so lucky to get an ice cream maker for our wedding in Denmark and we have already tested it several times.
Bob wanted to make traditional vanilla ice cream and I wanted to experiment a little and do a basil sorbet. They are both pretty amazing in their own way. The vanilla is creamy with the flavour of the vanilla bean really standing out (no extract was used making this!!). The basil is fresh and sweet, just perfect for an easy dessert after a nice meal.

Ice cream is really super simple to make once you know how. There were several recipes included in the book we got along with the machine so we used some of the base recipes and added our own touch to it. We prefer to use a little less sugar, so these recipes are already adjusted. If you want to reduce it even more you can do that too.

Vanilla ice cream

1/2 liter of cream
2 dl milk
3 whole eggs
120 g sugar
1-1 1/2 vanilla bean (get a good quality one since the bean is what creates your flavour)

Mix all the ingredients in a pot and heat it up slowly while stirring constantly. DO NOT BOIL!
Heat it up till 85 C or right before it starts to boil. You can also feel it when you stir and it starts to get a little thicker and stops moving right away when you stop stirring. When you see the first bubble, turn it off and pour into a cold bowl and let it cool completely.
Once it is cold stir it again and get your ice cream maker ready.
Turn it on and pour in the vanilla mixture, then let it run for about 30 minutes or until it is fairly thick.
Transfer into an airtight container and put it in the freezer or eat it right away 🙂

Basil sorbet

3 dl water
1 dl lime juice
120 g sugar
7-10 sprigs of basil
2 egg whites (60 g)

In a pot bring sugar and water to a boil and let it cook for 2-3 minutes. Transfer to a bowl to cool.
Rinse and chop the basil very finely. Squeeze the lime juice.
Once the sugar water has cooled completely stir in the lime juice (run it through a strainer if you don’t want any lime meat in your sorbet) and the basil.
Let it sit in the fridge for about an hour or so to soak up some flavour.
Then get your ice cream maker ready and pour in the basil mixture. Note that we leave the chopped basil leaves in the sorbet, therefore they should be chopped very finely.
In a clean bowl whip the egg whites stiff and when the basil mixture starts to form crystals and turn into slush ice you scoop the whipped egg whites in and let the machine do the rest of the job for another 20-25 minutes.
Transfer into an airtight container and put it in the freezer.
The reason for adding in the whipped egg whites is that it will make the sorbet lighter and more fluffy. If the mixture was just based on water you would end up with a cube of solid ice instead.

We are very excited about how the first two flavours turned out and we are ready to do some more experimenting, so stay tuned….!

-Enjoy!

Ayoe