Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

A couple of years ago, I got a Cuisinart ice cream maker as a gift. Boy, what a difference this thing makes over my salt and ice kind of ice cream maker! It's so quick and easy! If I could regularly get raw cream or pasturized, organic cream without carrageenan, I'd make ice cream much more often. Carrageenan is a seaweed-derived additive that is on my list of yucky stuff in food I avoid. According to Dr. Russell Blaylock in his book, Health and Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life, carrageenan is used as an agent to induce intense inflammation in experimental animals. It has also been implicated as a carcinogen. I don't believe I want any of that!

Anyway, carrageenan is found in every brand of locally available organic cream. It's not in the organic half and half, but that stuff is ultra-pasturized which is something else I try to avoid.

Last week, that changed. My local farm market got in some low-temperature pasturized cream with no other ingregients! It may not be raw, but it sure is good! Produced here in Kentucky by farmers who are not certified organic, but use the same practices, it meets three of my four main food goals:
it's local
it's virtually organic
and it's delicious

It's not raw, but that's to be expected in a state that doesn't allow raw milk sales.

So, I came home with two quarts of this delicious cream last week. My intention was to make ice cream, but I was sidetracked by strawberries. Strawberries, organic evaporated cane juice, and cream is a treat no one should miss. So, that's where the first quart went. Stinkerbaby even liked it and normally she doesn't like milk or fruit.

I did manage to get ice cream made out of the second quart. This is easily the best ice cream I have ever made! In addition to the great cream, it's a new recipe. This recipe is scaled for the little Cuisinart ICE-20 Ice Cream maker.

1 1/2 cup cream
1 1/2 cup whole milk
5 raw, pastured egg yolks (for those squeamish about raw eggs, see http://www.westonaprice.org/)
3/4 cup evaporated cane juice (or sugar)
1 TBSP vanilla
1 TBSP arrowroot powder (cornstarch is an acceptable substitute)

Combine all ingredients and blend with a stick blender or mixer. Add to ice cream maker and let it go for about 35 minutes. Transfer to another container to ripen overnight. Lick the bowl and wait until tomorrow.