Sea Salt Ice Cream

I grew up eating homemade ice cream. My mother has an old family recipe for the richest vanilla that I might share sometime. We'd set the old churn on the deck and I'd check periodically to see if it needed more ice or rock salt. It was the kind with a wooden cylindrical frame, a steel canister in the middle, and an electric churn than went across the top. Licking the paddle when the batch was finished was always the highest honor, usually given to whoever had helped the most or happened to be sick that day.

Well, J and I received an ice cream maker for our wedding, and it's sat in the closet through the winter. But in the recent 100-degree weather, I've been craving good ice cream. I even went out one day during lunch to track down the Coolhaus truck. They were packing up for the day, so all I ended up getting was sweaty.

After a successful round of coconut-rum-almond ice cream, I decided to try something a little more complex. I found a sea salt ice cream recipe from Murphy's Ice Cream in Ireland. 

The biggest initial challenge was making the custard. As a rookie cook, I have no idea what it means when something is cooked "just enough to stick to the back of a spoon." I also have limited patience and turned up the heat before reading the part that says the eggs will scramble if over-heated... 

 I whipped the cream to perfect fluffiness. (I am able to use a hand mixer!)

I did add a tsp of vanilla to the mixture since the custard smelled a little too eggy. After folding the custard into the whipped cream, it was ready to go into the ice cream maker.

I froze everything overnight. The recipe makes about 1 quart of ice cream.

 We served it with dark chocolate to cut some of the salty-sweetness. Voila!