I made ice cream (without a machine)!

I am very excited to show you my first batch of authentic homemade ice cream!

I made it by hand, without a machine, using the freeze and stir method described by David Lebovitz (whose recipes have yet to steer me wrong).  It sounded like the simplest option to me, somewhat similar to making granita.  And for my first endeavor, I stuck with a basic flavor, vanilla, and stirred in some dark chocolate at the end to make what's called "Stracciatela" (the Italian name for a vanilla based ice cream with small pieces of chocolate bits in it).

This isn't very eloquent but let me say that homemade ice cream is like "woah!"  It is some serious deliciousness and tastes a lot better than what you'd find in the freezer aisle.  In this case, I can really taste the pure vanilla flavor that comes from the fresh vanilla beans.  The vanilla ice cream is the star of the show but the bits of crunchy chocolate is a nice added bonus.  I love incorporating chocolate somehow into my dessert and I love having some crunch in my ice cream.  Is anybody else with me?

And I do love ice cream.  You probably know how I feel since I can't think of a single person I know who doesn't.  When I used to work in midtown, I'd sometimes take a walk during my lunch break and occasionally, I'd just grab an ice cream cone with mint chocolate chip ice cream for lunch while roaming around.  It made me very happy.  Nowadays, I may be better at portion control and no longer enjoy the soup bowl variety (those were the days!) but I still love myself some ice cream!

And that brings me to the fact that I've wanted to try making my own ice cream.  Just for fun.  I guess you just want to make things you love to eat.  I don't have an ice cream machine, however, and I really don't want one mainly because it would encourage too much ice cream making and eating on my part.  Secondly, I don't want to invest in another piece of equipment that I have no space for.  So if you're like me and interested in making a batch of ice cream without a machine, check out this post from thekitch.com which addresses that very question submitted by yours truly.

I was a little nervous about this ice cream when I was making it but in the end, my family and I agree that it came out great.  I had a nagging concern that maybe I didn't cook the custard long enough and for some reason, the ice cream didn't seem to firm up very well.  But I guess homemade ice cream doesn't firm up the way you might expect and you need to scoop it into a container and let it freeze further for several hours.  I did that and it turned out great in the end. 

Handmade ice cream done this way may not be as smooth and creamy in texture as the kind churned by machine but we have no complaints.  My son proclaimed it "really good" - eating the majority of the batch - and that makes me so happy.  I highly doubt I'll be able to resist taking another go at homemade ice cream before the summer's out.

Update (August 18, 2012):  I know it defeats the purpose of this post somewhat but I did, inevitably, buy an ice cream maker recently.  Here is this French-style vanilla ice cream churned by the ice cream maker.  The benefit to using the machine is clearly time savings and texture.  But both handmade and machine-churned taste delicious!