there is a season: churn, churn, churn

The countertops have been 409-ed, the floors vacuumed of Styrofoam peanut residue, and the dishes lifted from cardboard boxes into my refurbished cabinets. Ostensibly, the construction workers (or as I like to call them, “my sometimes roommates”) have left my apartment for good after two weeks of disruptive work and ridiculous shenanigans (one day, they made no repairs but did take the time to unplug my fridge). It’s at times like these—or, more realistically, after times like these, when you’ve had a chance to reclaim your 610 square feet—when it seems appropriate to substitute the occasional agonies of adulthood for the simple pleasures of childhood. In the middle of a June heatwave, that most certainly means ice cream, and lots of it.

Like a loaf of properly crusty bread, ice cream was one of those foods I thought impossible to recreate in my own humble kitchen—better left to Ben and Jerry to deposit in the supermarket freezer case. But then! Oh, then I started listening to David Lebovitz, Ice Cream Whisperer; his inventive recipes charmed and inspired me. We’ve made two batches of ice cream in the past two weeks: salted butter caramel in our first go-round, and more recently, mint chip. Last week’s CSA box contained handfuls of fresh mint leaves, and the temptation to recreate Ted’s favorite flavor was too great to pass up.

A yeast neophyte must study the kneading of bread dough; homemade ice cream, too, requires you to learn new techniques. With just a bit of trepidation, I picked up the basics of making custard, and soon it felt like second nature to scrape warm egg yolks into a pot of flavored cream. For each specific recipe, too, I learned new tricks. In making the salted butter caramel ice cream, I learned how to bring melted sugar to a deep, dark, toasty place just short of burning. For the mint chip, I learned to infuse milk and cream with mint leaves, as if steeping herbal tea. And for the “chip” component, we made homemade chocolate chips by scribbling and swirling melted Ghirardelli into layers of freshly-churned ice cream. (Click on the links for each recipe; David’s instructions are masterful, and will guide even a nervous first-timer through the basics without any casualties.)

The verdict? The salted caramel ice cream was dark and complex, richly indulgent, and sweetly salty. We mixed in bits of hard praline that magically softened in the freezer, dotting the ice cream with gooey pockets of caramel. It froze to a soft, inviting consistency. The mint chip was wholly different: the palest of pale greens, imbued with intense freshness—not a sign of artificial mint color or flavor to be found!—and freezing solidly into a scoopable mass. Oh, and did I mention all the swirls of chocolate? I loved them both, differently but equally.

So I’ve become smitten with homemade ice cream, and as you can tell, the process has been an education. Plus, it has been the perfect way to reclaim my kitchen from the construction workers. With the latest home invasion over, I will tirelessly churn my way through new flavors (in my somewhat shoddily-renovated kitchen) until my full belly cries “autumn!”