TWD: Vanilla Ice Cream

When it comes to my ice cream cones, I've never really been a vanilla ice cream sort of girl. Vanilla ice cream is essential for things like warm brownies, peach cobbler, and apple pie. Hot fudge is lonely without vanilla ice cream, and crushed up Oreos are are a perfect foil for that creamy goodness. But, I never could get excited about plain old vanilla ice cream. It must be people like me who give vanilla a bad name. I've always disliked the use of vanilla as a synonym for meh, or it's all right but it doesn't knock my socks off. While I might not seek out vanilla at the ice cream shop, I understand the purist point of view on this one. A good vanilla ice cream stands in a class by itself. It's the Grand Poobah of ice creams.

So, it really shouldn't come as a great surprise to anyone that once again, the often imitated, but never duplicated, Dorie Greenspan, has come up with a recipe for an insanely good vanilla ice cream. Dudley is a big fan of vanilla ice cream (so much so that he orders vanilla milkshakes, an act that I simply can't fathom. I keep trying to explain that milkshakes were meant to be chocolate!) and Dudley declared this the best vanilla ice cream he'd ever had in his life. He liked this ice cream so much that he devoured the quart over the course of about 36 hours. I was actually going to make some hot fudge for this ice cream, but he declared it so good that hot fudge would only detract from it's very vanilla wonderfulness. Too good for hot fudge? No such thing! However, I was only too happy to let him eat the ice cream while I found other goodies to eat.


I used vanilla beans to flavor the ice cream, and I thought it came together very nicely and easily. The only problem that I ran into is that the full recipe is a scosh large for my KA ice cream bowl so it had some trouble chilling and running over the top. I actually loved the custard base for this, and I had a couple of spoonfuls before I set it in the fridge to chill.

Is it the best vanilla ice cream ever? Dudley certainly thinks so, and I think it's outstanding, too. Last summer I made the Cook's Illustrated vanilla bean ice cream, and earlier this month I made (but never posted, oops!) the Sweet Melissa brown sugar vanilla ice cream. I loved that brown sugar ice cream, I thought it was SO good! I know that people have made David Lebovitz's vanilla ice creams, and I'm interested to hear about how they stack up against this vanilla ice cream. Thanks to Lynne of, Cafe Lynnylu, for picking this very wonderful and versatile recipe this week. You can visit her blog for the recipe!