How To Make Ice Cream

Hi there. I am going to show you how to make vanilla ice cream and I'm going to do it in one of these very simple, economical ice cream machines that make fantastic ice cream from Kenwood. Now, I have got some full fat milk.

When you're cooking, always use full fat, otherwise it splints. That is going in a pan, and I'm going to heat that through. I've also got a vanilla pod here, moving all of these out of the way so you can see, and I am just going to slice lengthways down the pod.

We want to get all that vanilla out so you just scrape using the back end of the knife. The pod goes in as well. There we go, then same again here, and what's going to happen over the next 5-6 minutes, not even, I would say probably 2-3 minutes, the milk's going to come up to the boil and then we are going to leave that just to fuse those flavours through just for about 20 minutes.

Now, I wanted to talk to you about the mechanics of how the whole process of making ice cream works. Because when we have the actual custard because that is really what it is, we are going to put it into this bowl and what's going to happen is, it is going to turn the ice cream and freeze at the same time. Now, these particular ice cream machines, you have to put this pot in the freezer for about 24 hours.

It comes out - you put the custard in, it turns. That milk is coming up to the boil now, so what I will do is just take that it off the heat and I'm going to leave it there for about 15-20 minutes for all those flavours in the vanilla to infuse with the milk, so you really get the maximum amount of vanilla pod. We are going to add sugar at egg yolks; we are going to turn it.

When it thickens out, we're going to scrape it into a separate container and finish it off in a freezer. This sounds a little confusing now but it will make perfect sense in a moment, trust me. Well, that milk's been resting for about 20 minutes, I've got these gloves on because it hurts when you have to scrape all the rest of the vanilla out when it's very hot.

Just give that a good old mix. Now, if you're working in the same quantities as me, I've got three egg yolks in here, I've got half a pints of milk, half a pints of cream, one vanilla pod and about three table spoons of caster sugar. Now, I'm just going to mix.

You could use an electric hand mix if you like but I'm just going to mix the sugar and the egg like that, and this is what is going to help the ice cream set later on. And then I'm just going to pour the yolks and the sugar into the milk so just keep moving that. There we go.

Give it a good old mix and that's going back onto the hob. Now, there's a reason why I use the wooden spoon, and I'm going to show you what that is now. At the moment, you can see the mixture is quite runny and what I'm looking to do is coup the back of the spoon and that's going to take a bit of the cooking down, now, you do have to be a bit careful, because if you're not careful, you end up with scrambled eggs which interestingly enough is how Heston Blumenthal came out with his Bacon & Eggs ice cream, because one day, one of his chefs cooked the caster, which I'm doing now and it turned into eggs, and being a good chef, he didn't want to waste the ingredients, "Oh, what goes with eggs - I will try bacon".

It didn't taste as nice with ice cream but then he added a sweet brioche to the final dish, and it was fantastic. So, I'm going to cook this down for about 3-4 minutes until in coats the back of the spoon because at the moment it is still watery, and then we are going to finish the ice cream off. Right, let me just show you now.

You can see, it is coating the back of the spoon beautifully, so that is ready. Now, I've got my cream here, and the reason I like putting the cream as this point, lot of people put the cream and the milk together, at the same time, but this actually cools the mixture down and one of these ice creams, one way or another, you have to freeze the