A while back, I got this incredibly inspired idea that I have approximately 80 bajillion dollars worth of Kitchen-Aid appliances and accessories in my kitchen that I haven't used in maybe a hundred years, so let's bust everything out and do something with them. I guess you could say I went on a Wheaton-esque "get excited and make things" kick for about twenty minutes.
I decided to make ice cream because it was very hot at the time. The heat has broken some in the meantime, but at that particular point it was too damned hot to even write about it. Hell, it was almost too hot to EAT it. But we took all our ingredients and spread them out on the stove so I could take a picture of them, and then we got to work.
We could not reach a consensus on what kind of ice cream to make. I've made ice cream before, in those practically prehistoric Days Before Children, but this was my first attempt with a very militant chocoholic in the house. Which could have been dicey, because I don't like chocolate ice cream (I know, it's un-American, WHATEVER, I'm already a socialist so hush). The compromise recipe was for cherry chocolate chip, which we made using 2 cups heavy cream, 2 cups half-and-half, 3/4 cup sugar (divided -- most of it in the ice cream, 2-3 tablespoons for the cherries), 1 tablespoon of my 15-year old Mexican vanilla (not I am not joking, my vanilla is THAT OLD), 2 dashes kosher salt, 3/4 cup fresh sweet cherries, and 1/3 cup mini semisweet chips.
At this point I will tell you what we did wrong. One, we should have used all cream -- either all heavy cream, or a combination of heavy and light cream. The final texture using the half-and-half was a bit too grainy. We might have been okay if we did a custard-style ice cream, but I didn't want to do that much work, and my eggs are always a bit dodgy. Also, we did not cut up the cherries into small enough pieces, nor did we let them "marinate" long enough. Probably we should have prepared the cherries the day before, let them soak up all the sugar, and then mashed the snot out of them.
We left our ice cream bowl in the freezer for 24 hours. We might want to let it go longer than that next time, but it was mostly okay. Our ingredients were not cold enough when we put them in the bowl; if you follow this recipe, I recommend putting everything in the freezer for at least an hour before adding it to the ice cream bowl. Let the mixer do the work for about half an hour or so (according to directions), and add the cherries and the chocolate chips for the last 10-15 minutes.
Also: you will need to freeze your ice cream before you can eat it. We let ours sit overnight before we ate it. So, basically, we started the process on Sunday (bowl in freezer), made the ice cream on Monday, poured it into covered containers and let it "ripen," and then finally ate it on Tuesday. Was it worth the wait?
Mostly. Like I said, our ice cream had an "off" texture, and because the cherries were not cut small enough some of them were basically solid chunks of frozen fruit when we finally ate it, plus since we didn't let them "marinate" long enough we got random bites of cherry that were more tart than others, but overall, the flavor was quite good. I really liked it. I'd definitely make it again, making a few small tweaks to the recipe and process. Although it was not all chocolate, the chocolate chips satisfied the animal urges of the not-so-little one.
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