Ice cream and frozen custard...

I figure since I am in a "food mood" today I would go out and find an inexpensive ice cream machine so I could make some frozen custard. We have a few local places that make good custard, one that makes great custard but a trip for the family can easily be $20 so we have to limit it to once a month, if that. There has to be a way to make it and save money and a good start was finding a 1 US Gallon machine that was under $25. After that the ingredients will be the only expense and that will vary from batch to batch. I made a batch tonight and it was about $8 to make 1.5 US Gallons.

Making the custard is the easy part and something I have been doing for other deserts along the way, so it is not something new to learn. A few small changes to the ingredients to get a creamier flavor from it but that's about all. I also found a few different recipes to try so we can find the best one and so far it looks to be less then $10 or less per 1 gallon batch with the exception of 1 recipe which is close to $25 and requires 3 quarts of heavy whipping cream. I might try to make that one once and unless it knocks my socks off and is light years ahead of the others it will most likely not be done again.

I also though that we would make a tray of brownies and some caramel so we could make concretes out of the custard when it is done. If I can get a good caramel recipe down, a handful of pretzels is all I need and I won't ever need to go back to my favorite custard shop. I was also thinking of using different extracts, other then vanilla, like Rum to flavor each batch a bit different. Since a batch is so big, at least 1 US gallon, that is more then enough to last all of us a week if we eat it each night so maybe 2 batches a month and I can do that on a Sunday easily.

Right now the first batch is cooling in the fridge for about 4 hours before I put it in the ice cream machine and from there it is about 25-40 minutes until we have what is hopefully a good batch of frozen custard. I will get some pictures when it is all done as well as some tasting notes. Wish us luck!