Just-the-Best Vanilla Ice Cream

The only thing better than a spoonful of warm blackberry cobbler or a wedge of chocolatey chocolate cake, is the aforementioned, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream alongside. Warm berry tartness and dense chocolate-on-chocolate fudginess meet their sole match: only the creamy cooling, overwhelming magic of vanilla ice cream can break up fudginess, or enrobe and de-sting warm berry tartness. This version here is not ice milk (no cream), Philadelphia-style (no eggs) nor gelato (lots of eggs), but somewhere in the middle. Milk and cream gets thickened with egg yolks and cornstarch over heat, chilled down quickly, and stirred while being frozen. Egg yolks add richness and protect against iciness; the extra fat prevents the water in milk and cream from freezing into large, distinct shards. Too many egg yolks will make for a dense ice cream, one that’s closer to gelato (which isn’t a bad thing!)—and a distinctly yellow one at that. I split the difference here (gelati typically call for five or six yolks per pint, while Philadelphia-style ice creams, ice milks, sorbets, and sherbets call for none). Three yolks is enough to avoid an icy texture—which ice creams made in at-home machines are likely to have—but not so much that the custard looks like it’s mango-flavored. Chilling the base (called “aging”) ensures that the custard is nice and cold before being churned and frozen, and encourages the binding of dairy and egg fat molecules (i.e. thicker-textured, creamier ice cream). The ice bath is a speedy option, but if you’re in no rush, let the custard rest in the fridge overnight (or up to 5 days) and churn later on. Keep ice cream from going icy by transferring the frozen base to a frozen container and pressing a parchment circle directly onto its surface. If you happen to have a vanilla bean in your baking pantry, you will be rewarded with extra fragrant, sweetly speckled scoops. (Psst, don’t throw out the spent pod—I stick them in a mini-bar bottle of vodka that I top off occasionally for homemade vanilla extract.) But it’s really not necessary: Our test kitchen tested this recipe with vanilla extract, and that batch, stashed in a secret freezer with tasting spoons, was gone within two hours. Enjoy straight from the freezer like our team did, or spooned onto Blackberry Cobbler.