National Ice Cream Day

 

Today is National Ice Cream Day!  Now, for me, it's not one of the greatest food days of the year because in actuality I celebrate it all year long, not just a single day.  As many of my readers, friends and family know, ice cream is far and away the most favorite food of all for me. 

I enjoy especially making mint chocolate ice cream, French vanilla, triple chocolate, roasted strawberry, and even something a bit more unusual like lavender with blueberry swirl.

All my ice creams are made beginning with a custard base.  This means I heat up cream and sugar and eggs until just the right temperature.   Then other flavor components go in.  And the whole batch is chilled overnight before it's frozen in my trusty Cuisinart ice cream freezer.  This freezer uses canisters that must be frozen before use.  I keep 5 canisters ready in my freezer at all times.  This is because sometimes I like to make lots and lots all at once.  After each batch of ice cream is completed and packed in containers, the canisters must be cleaned and then refrozen.  So 5 is a good number to have in my freezer.  They take up a lot of space, but it's worth it.

I'm always thinking of new flavors I want to try.  A couple times in the past, I have made banana with caramelized white chocolate.  It's very very good.  But the busy-ness of my schedule has kept me from doing the final tweaks I customarily do with new foods to be added to my menu.  And so it hasn't happened yet for this flavor.  But it will eventually.  And in addition, there are many other flavors I want to experiment with.

I've seen some pretty unusual flavors, such as beet ice cream....hmmm.  I've never tried some of these offbeat flavors, and I'm not sure it's worth it to satisfy my curiosity to buy a whole cone or sundae made of this kind of flavor which I would probably have to do at a high price since this kind of flavor is usually only made by trendy high-priced small ice cream shops.  Perhaps sometime I will, but it's hard to see me doing it for such an unusual flavor for which I have an instinctive doubt.

In any event, enjoy the day, eat some ice cream, and keep doing it regularly.  I have to exercise considerable restraint to not eat it every day.  If it were healthy to do so, I'd definitely do it.