Philly Style Vanilla Ice Cream

By Jim Cargo

Kreinik will be shutting down all of our sales/marketing/manufacturing operations to enjoy a week of vacation following July 4th and will re-open July 10. For 4th of July weekend my mother-in-law reminded me to bring my ice cream maker with me. I have an "off the hook" recipe for Philadelphia Style Vanilla Ice cream. The recipe is ridiculously simple to follow and the results are downright sinful. I have friends who refer to this as "Silk" (we never stray too far from threads) as it is so smooth and creamy. I got this recipe from the book "The Ultimate Ice Cream Book" by Bruce Weinstein. Its been a family favorite ever since.

To make about 1 quart you need:
An ice cream maker and rock/kosher salt
3 cups of heavy cream
3/4 cup, plus 2 tablespoons of sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

The directions:
Place heavy cream in a sauce pan and heat (do not boil) until you start to see small bubbles appearing around the edge of the pan. You only need to get the cream hot enough to dilute the sugar. When hot enough, turn off stove, and stir in the sugar. Allow the cream/sugar mixture to cool for 10 minutes before stirring in the vanilla. Place mixture in the fridge for a few hours to cool completely.

Add the chilled mixture to your ice cream maker. Back in the old days we used to have to hand crank this stuff out. Not anymore. I use a Rival electric ice cream maker but any machine will do. Follow the makers instructions for setting up your machine. After about an hour, the ice cream is done. My son gets first dibs on the beater when I'm done.

Fresh out of the maker, a good bit of the ice cream is just like soft serve making it easy to make some ice cream sandwiches. I like to put this on top of some freshly baked brownies to make brownie sundaes. (Sorry, no calorie counting here.) Perfect for get-togethers, holidays or really hot summer days.