Backyard Mint

After our cooking class, I was inspired to make ice cream.  So last week, I jumped into my Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream cookbook with one of my seasonal favorites, Backyard Mint.  I was even able to add mint from our little garden :)  The book is easy to follow and is broken down into 4 steps (prep, cook, chill and freeze) for each ice cream so once you get the hang of it, you can easily adapt recipes and make your own flavors.

I started by steeping the mint leaves in cream overnight (like I said, I love mint) and straining the leaves out (don't worry, they will be back):

 

 The next step in prep was getting the ice bath ready.  This is extremely important because it really chills the mixture making the freezing step fast:

 Combining the cream, whole milk and sugars:

 Whipping the cream cheese (her recipes are NOT egg based, they use cream cheese and corn starch to thicken):

 Slurry of cream and corn starch:

 Boiling the cream mixture:

 Once the boiling was complete, I added the mint leaves back in and poured the mixture into a gallon zip top bag and submerged in the ice bath for a few hours:

 Mixing the ice cream:

 The final product, creamy and minty and delicious!  The ice cream made it a family party, otherwise, I would have been tempted to eat the entire container: