Ice Cream Base or Smiling on the Inside

Ice cream is one of my most favorite things.  Let's be honest: it's fantastic.  My life was changed when my dear husband bought an ice cream machine for my birthday.  Yeah!  My life was changed even more when I went to composed frozen dessert class.  We made three kinds of ice cream from one base.  That times 4 students equals 12 ice cream flavors, one custard.  Brilliant.  

Now, I can make a batch of base, which I just did, portion it into 2 C. servings, which I will do in a moment, and freeze.  Then, I will have ice cream at my finger tips.  Just thaw, flavor, and churn. 

This recipe is a basic custard.  I always half it because I can't pour 2 quarts of liquid into a bowl full of eggs while whisking vigorously.  But, if you have a cooking buddy, or really strong arms, use the full.

Ice Cream Base

1 1/2 quarts whole milk
1 pint heavy cream
2 t. vanilla
16 egg yolks
20 oz. granulated sugar

Combine milk, cream, and vanilla in heavy saucepan and bring to boil.

Whisk egg yolks and sugar together in a mixing bowl.

While whisking eggs, pour 1/3 of milk mixture into bowl.  Return saucepan to stove and add the egg mixture.

Cook over medium heat until slightly thickened.  It takes about 4-5 minutes.  Pour through fine mesh strainer into clean bowl.

At this point you can chill it and use immediately or portion and freeze.

Notes:
Don't whisk the eggs and sugar together before the milk is almost at a boil.  Doing so before will create dried pieces of egg that you don't want in your ice cream.
When thickening the custard don't cook high heat to make the process faster.  Doing so can curdle the eggs.

Food Styling

Chef Karima gave me a couple of books on food styling.  I've been looking at one of them, by Denise Vivaldi, who is basically the word when it comes to food styling.  I'm been amazed, but not really shocked while reading it.  I knew they did weird things with the food, but I didn't know how much work went into it.  I also didn't realize how much they do.  Like a bowl of cereal in a breakfast scene of a TV show was probably done by a food stylist.  That seems so easy.  So not necessary to pull in a professional, but they do.  Also, I knew fake food, or non edible stuff was used, but for her food is a minimum.  Most of the food isn't edible.  To me that seems weird.  I want to know when I look at a cook book that the piece of cake is actually the recipe that is on the page and that the author has made it before and that it will turn out for me when I make it.  But, it made me realize that cook books are made for different reasons.  Some people write cook books because they love food and want to share what they have with other people.  They take care in each recipe.  Other cook books are sold to make money because they know people will buy it.  For instance, I recently had a Philadelphia cream cheese cook book.  After going threw several recipes I was mostly dissatisfied and hated the fact that my food didn't look like the pictures.  After reading what I have, I now know that the pictures probably had little to do with the recipes.  The stylist was probably given a recipe, realized it didn't work, and made something that looked similar and that would photo well.  Most of it probably wasn't edible.  I think I'm more of a real food kind of a person.  I don't know, but it seems to make sense to me.  It's probably not as cost effective, but I think I like food more than styling.