French Vanilla Bean Ice Cream Recipe

A couple of months ago, I purchased an Ice Cream Maker, and this whole summer I have been making Ice Creams and Sorbets. This here is a recipe for Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream that I made the most. It's so soft, creamy, rich and uses real Vanilla Beans! You can make this with and without and Ice Cream Maker. But having one will certainly make your life easier, and can actually save you a lot of money down the line, if you buy Ice Cream often. Of course, no store bought Ice Cream will ever compare to this.

This is a basic recipe, and a good one too, and what that means is that you can add lots of other things to this, to make different sorts of Ice Cream. And it doesn't have to be summer in order to make Ice Cream.

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Here are the Ingredients:

7 Egg Yolks

130 gr (2/3 cup) Sugar

600 ml (2 1/2 cups) Whole Milk

240 ml (1/2 cup) Heavy Cream

1 Whole Vanilla Bean

A note about the Ingredients: Make sure that the eggs are at room temperature so that they cream up better. It helps to use organic free range eggs too.

1. Pour the milk and the cream into a saucepan.

2. Cut a Vanilla Bean in half, and with the tip of a knife take out the seeds. But them, together with the beans in the milk and cream and let it simmer. Do not let it come to a boil!

3. While the milk is heating up, mix the sugar with the egg yolks and beating with a mixer, cream them for 2-3 minutes, until the mixture thickens and becomes pale.

4. Once the milk, cream and vanilla mixture has become hot, take out the Vanilla Bean. Tip: Don't thorw it away! Put it in a jar with some regular sugar, and you'll get the most amazing tasting vanilla sugar.

5. Now we need to temper the eggs. Using a ladle, pour some of the milk and cream mixture slowly into the sugar and egg yolk mixture and then immediately mix it in with a mixer or by hand.

6. Pour the tempered eggs back into the rest of the milk and cream mixture, and continue to cook for another 5-10 minutes on low heat. The mixture needs to thicken. You'll know that it's done if the mixture covers the back of a wooden spoon, and when you make a line on the back of the spoon, the two sides don't run into each other.

7. Pour the cooked custard, through a sieve, into a bowl, and cover the top with some cling film, and let it cool down, then transfer it into your fridge and let it cool completely over night.

8. If you are using an Ice Cream Maker you should also make sure that the insert to your Ice Cream Maker is in the freezer overnight or however long it needs to be. Next day pour the mixture into the Ice Cream Maker and let it churn according to your manufacturers instructions. Mine takes 30 minutes. The consistency of your Ice Cream will be soft once it's done. Just transfer it into a air tight container, and leave it in the freezer for a good hour, before you scoop it out.

Voila! You're done, and ready to eat. I know that it looks like it's a long process, but really if you have an Ice Cream Maker you'll keep the container in the freezer always, and the mixture for the Ice Cream does make itself fast, you just have to wait for it to chill. So it's not time consuming on your part.

Tip: If you don't have an Ice Cream Maker don't be alarmed. You can make this without one (even though It won't taste quite the same). The trick is, once you pour the mixture into the airtight container in the end, take it out of the freezer every 30 minutes for the next 5-6 hours and give it a good stir. That way you'll get rid of the ice crystals that stop the ice cream from being creamy.

I hope you'll like this recipe! There is nothing quite like homemade Ice Cream. This one is very rich and creamy!

Maude Fealy

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See also

Take a peak in our Garden

Sundays are usually reserved for chores around the house. We have been building a small house right next to our main one, and the Garden is being redecorated and replanted as I write this down. My dad bought a land parcel right next to our house, and It has been work ever since. 

Click here to view "Winter 2014 in our Garden"

Now, as the days of building and interior designing are winding down, we have more time to focus on the garden, which has been a real mess through the summer, and is still a work in progress. But, things are looking up. Let's have a look.

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My mom loves to have fresh herbs in the garden, so we plant a lot of them. The first two images are sage and mint, lovely for all sorts of dishes.

If you look closely on this one (better yet, enlarge it), you may be able to spot a small ant on the petals. Purely incidental. Of course, If I had wanted to capture one I would have never been able to find one.

The grass we have been growing is called Dichondra. Very easy to take care of and also very robust. You'll see more of it in the images that follow.

We have our neighbors Pomegranate tree growing right behind our wall. The fruit has been ripening.

Here is a wider shot of the garden. In the background you can spot a little portion of the small house that we are building. A wider shot follows later.

Bigger view of the Pomegranate Tree.

Wide shot of our house. There is still some stuff that needs to be rearranged around it.

Wide shot of the new house, that is still in construction. The roof has not been finished yet. It'll be completely white just as the roof of the main house. And the walls inside are being painted tomorrow. I'll show more of it in another post.

I'll leave you with this image, of the approaching dark clouds. This is the view from our upstairs balcony, where I recently took the full moon images. They said that the weather would change (for the worse) over the weekend. I guess that time has come now.

Please let me know if you have any flower ideas. We are looking for smallish, sustainable flowers that are colorful. If you have some experience in this filed, please let me know in the comments below.

Vintage Beauties

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Christmas Sparkle in Cologne

As I was sitting down to write and post something to this Friday's Theme, I immediately knew what the images were going to be. And, yes, Christmas is not on our doorstep for another three months, but in these grey days a little warm sparkling lights of Christmas can do no harm.

These images were taken on the Cologne Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) last December. The Market was filled with all sorts of goodies, from food and wine to toys and kick-nacks. Yes, I know, these are not images from my town, but you be the judge if I should have omitted them...

click on the images for a bigger view

If you would like to see the full set of images from our trip to Cologne, visit the following links (I know there is a lot, but it was a trip with over 800 images that were reduced to 8 posts! I ordered them chronologically. If you like leave a comment or two on the posts below). We had the time of our lives, and I hope we'll manage to bring that forward to you!

A Stroll Down the Weihnachtsmarkt (Part One) 

A Stroll Down the Weihnachtsmarkt (Part Two)

Modern Cologne (Part One)

Modern Cologne (Part Two)

Cologne Cathedral

Phantasialand - Theme Park (Part One)

Phantasialand - Theme Park (Part Two)

Phantasialand - Theme Park (Part Three)

How to turn Day into Night Tutorial

I have the duty to lift the secret off of the recent Dawn in the Forest images. To me an image has to speak its own language and communicate with the viewer, and how that conversation gets started doesn't matter. A lot of comments on that post read: magical, dreamy, secluded, spooky etc. And that was the goal! 

In the case of all the images in that post, they were taken midday! And the dark, moody, blue and green undertones were added in post-production. That's where this tutorial comes in.

This is a comparison between the daylight version and the edited version.

There are a few ground rules that must be established first when it comes to day to night conversion. You can't change any daylight image into night and have it work. There are three simple rules that must be obeyed when taking the image:

1. Always shoot in the shade, not in direct sunlight

2. Never shoot the sky

3. Shoot in RAW mode of your dslr camera

This whole method will cover RAW files, and editing in Photoshops Camera Raw application. Editing simple JPEG images will not really make this work, but you can certainly try it.

Step 1

Open your RAW file image in Photoshop 

Step 2

Edit the RAW file

Now when it comes to this, you can and will have to apply most of the filters. I'll list down what I had to change.

Temperature: Down to 3850 (Make sure this is the cold blue spectrum of the Temperature slider)

Tint: +38 (For this image it helped to turn it into the magenta spectrum)

Exposure: -2,20 (This, besides the Temperature is the main filter, slide it down into the darkness)

Highlights: -100 (Turn them down completely. This will tone down and bright spots in the image that come from daylight)

Shadows: +83 (Since you turned down the Exposure and Highlights, the image will seem too dark, slide this up to make the details of the image more visible)

Whites: -100 (No bright whites during night, slide down completely)

Clarity and Vibrance: I played a bit with these two sliders just to enhance the effect. Sliding down Clarity makes the image softer which works nicely for the night, and by moving the Vibrance up the colors pop out without being too saturated. Definitely play around with these two.

All of these changes are visible in this next screenshot. Click on it to enlarge.

Click on OK. You can very well end here, as the effect is created. As you can see in my example, the conversion left a red object behind (by the left trees), which didn't look right. If you have any unwanted colors left, move over to Step 3.

Step 3

Remove any unwanted, left-over, colors

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool (or press the letter M on your keyboard while Photoshop is opened) and make sure to set the Feather to a nice soft 50. Circle around the color that you want to remove.

3.1: Select Image > Adjustments > Replace Color

3.2: The Eyedropper Tool will automatically be selected. Use it, and click on that spot of your image where the unwanted colors is located.

3.3: Don't be alarmed if the color doesn't match perfectly, the Eyedropper Tool selects color by pixels, and you'll never be able to get it 100%. But it will suffice. 

Now use the Hue, Saturation and Lightness Sliders in the Replace Color Dialog box to change the color and match it to the rest of the image. See that screenshot that follows to see what I have done.

Once your done click OK.

Step 4

Save your Image

File > Save as...

This is the end product of the conversion. For more examples of day to night conversion check out my recent post.

I hope this was interesting to read. If you decide to make this yourself, please let me know, would love to see your images. As always, if you have further questions let me know in the comments below. Thank you for stopping by.

Moppets Charm School by Arthur Rickerby for LIFE Magazine

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Arthur B. Rickerby (1921–1972) was an American photographer whose most famous works are his sports photography, especially his color photography essays, and his photographs of the Kennedy administration. His work is most noted for its realism and pioneering use of the 35 mm camera and the early zoom lens.

Unlikely Friendships

These two have been friends since the guy from the first picture was born. Beni is turning 5 soon, and Div is 3 soon. I took these photos recently, and it reminded me of their unlikely friendship and the first day they met. After the pictures you'll find a video of their first get together!

Do you have or know someone who has an unlikely friendship with another person? You know, those times, where you go "How are the two of them friends", but yet deep inside something meaningful is shared, that often goes unoticed by third persons.