Into the Woods

I had not made ice cream in well over a year. But the chickens have been laying well lately, so I start thinking about how to spend some eggs. Ice cream was a start. If you want to make ice cream, you have to crack some eggs. Proper ice cream has egg yolks in it.

Here’s a basic recipe for vanilla ice cream with a whiff of lemon. You could add whatever you like to this recipe to make different flavors.

Rich, old-fashioned ice cream

4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup whipping cream
1 cup milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract 
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract

In a double-boiler, whisk everything together except for the extracts. While whisking over steam, heat the mixture to about 175 degrees. Then pour the mixture into an ovenproof glass bowl, cover it, and chill it to refrigerator temperature. This will take several hours, or overnight.

When you’re ready to make the ice cream, add the extracts (or other flavorings) and pour the mixture into your ice cream freezer.

I don’t waste the egg whites. When I have leftover egg whites, if I can’t think of anything else to do with them, then I cook them and feed them back to the chickens. Chickens certainly should not eat chicken, but eggs are good for them if you cook the eggs and mix them with other scraps so that the chickens don’t know what it is.