Home Made Vanilla Honey Ice Cream

We decided to get out the trusty Cuisinart ice cream machine over the weekend. It's so easy to make ice cream or frozen treats. I also just bought a ice shaver so we can make snow cones. Here in the hot weather, we need all the cold stuff we can get our hands on. Anyways, I found this recipe for vanilla bean ice cream sweetened with honey and brown sugar on Allrecipes.com. The result is a rich, creamy ice cream that tastes like dulce de leche! It had the best caramel taste. After I made this ice cream, I had the worst time trying to get a decent picture of it. It was not cooperating with the scoop at all.

• 2 cups milk
• 1 (7 inch) vanilla bean, split lengthwise
• 5 egg yolks
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 cup half and half

In a medium pan, heat the milk and vanilla bean to simmering. Do not boil. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, brown sugar, honey, and salt until light colored and frothy. While whisking constantly, slowly combine the hot milk with the egg mixture. Transfer the mixture back to the sauce pan. Cook and stir almost constantly over medium heat until mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 10 minutes.

Remove the vanilla bean from the mixture and reserve. Strain custard into a large bowl. Scrape seeds from the vanilla bean into the custard. (Vanilla bean pod may be used again to make vanilla sugar.) Stir the heavy cream and half and half into the custard. Cover the surface of the custard with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4 hours.

When cold, freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.