A pear of scoops

That free ice cream maker attachment showed up on my doorstep a couple weeks ago; right in the midst of all this life changing puppy-ness. It's as if it arrived to glare at me and taunt me and challenge me, and say "you KNOW you want to make ice cream even though it will mean keeping one eye on the kitchen and one eye on Lucca running around eating pillows, shoes and magazines!" And I'll be damned if that blasted ice cream maker attachment didn't win! But come now, who can say no to new kitchen appliances and a recipe [torn from a waiting room magazine - it was very old, I didn't feel so guilty] waiting patiently in my recipe box? Certainly not I.

I saw this Pear Stracciatella Ice Cream recipe in a Martha Stewart Living mag from a few years ago and decided to give it a go.

Simmering pears ------ Pureeing the pears ----- Adding pears to crème anglaise

Stracciatella is ice cream with chocolate shavings in it. So technically I just made Pear Ice Cream, 'cuz I didn't have the time to deal with adding melted chocolate to the freezing ice cream. But the resulting flavor (while perhaps not my first choice) was very clean and fresh and VERY pear!

Ooohh ice cream maker -- Firing it up for the first time!!

After cooking pears in a vanilla bean syrup, you make a crème anglaise and add a portion of the pears to it after puréeing it smooth. Then freeze this mixture and add the remainder of the (diced) poached pears to the ice cream when it's almost done freezing. One thing I'd forgotten about making ice cream is that ice cream isn't the greatest served immediately after making. It's still rather soft:

A little soft, but still tasty!

I don't think my dinner guests minded it's soft texture - but I recently read somewhere that when ice cream is frozen firm, the sweetness is not so strong. I couldn't help but notice that the "soft" ice cream was VERY sweet. But maybe I only noticed that because I had those words in my head.

Two scoops of pear ------- Want a bite?

Though, after freezing overnight it was PERFECT. It tasted like "real" ice cream! And the attachment went right back into the freezer after I washed it. I'm preppin' for more!!