This is my favorite ice cream at this time of year. It is a wonderful compliment to all of the holiday favorite pies (Thanksgiving apple and pumpkin). We serve it with my mom’s beautiful raspberry and pear tarts at Christmas and I also love it with a dark chocolate dessert. It is a nice change from traditional vanilla, and the cinnamon may just make you a convert!

Cinnamon Ice Cream
2 cups whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1 whole vanilla bean, cut in half and scraped for the seeds
2 tsp cinnamon
8 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar

In a medium saucepan combine the milk, cream, vanilla bean, seeds, and cinnamon. Simmer lightly over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until hot and a little frothy but not boiling. Remove the cream from the heat and set aside. Fish the vanilla bean out of the cream and discard.

In a standing mixer or with a hand held mixer, whisk the egg yolks until pale and double in volume. Add the sugar and whisk until well combined.

Temper the cream into the eggs, which means to add a tiny bit of warm or hot cream into the eggs at a time while whisking constantly. When about a third of the cream has mixed in, you can go ahead and add the rest all at once- just keep whisking. This will make sure that the eggs don’t turn into scrambled eggs!

Return the entire egg-cream mixture to the saucepan over low heat. Cook gently, stirring frequently until the mixture thickens into a custard that is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

When it reaches the proper consistency, pour the custard into a glass bowl and let it cool about 30 minutes.

When it is cool, cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate it until cold- probably a few hours.

Freeze the custard in an ice cream machine according to directions.