The secret ingredient: Vanilla extract

To avoid making a boring ice cream custard consisting only of egg, milk, cream and sugar, adding a couple of drops of vanilla extract will help turn things around.

Vanilla extract is THE secret ingredient in adding more flavour to your homemade ice cream.

If you look around ice cream recipe books, vanilla extract can sometimes appear to be a major ingredient in a lot of ice cream: Chocolate, pistachio, rum and raisin... etc.

From my understanding, vanilla extract is basically a process of extraction of the vanilla scent and taste with the use of alcohol. That little 25ml bottle pictured above contains only of vanilla beans and alcohol as ingredients (and cost a cool $2.50!).

When added to ice cream, it is usually used sparingly - about half a teaspoon for 300ml of ice cream made.

Check out a good old rum and raisin ice cream recipe using vanilla extract here.