Very Vanilla Ice Cream with White Chocolate and Peppermint

This is a doctored ice cream recipes. Take vanilla ice cream and add a few simple ingredients, refreeze, and tell everyone it’s homemade. It looks like ordinary peppermint ice cream, but it’s not.  Peppermint is a strong flavor, so it usually kind of takes over whatever it’s in, but not so with this ice cream gourmet recipes. It’s big on vanilla, light on the peppermint. And the white chocolate adds the perfect touch without being overwhelming. There is probably nothing better than ice cream and brownies easy dessert recipes.

Ingredients

1 3/4 quarts (7 cups) good quality vanilla ice cream

4 ounces white chocolate

1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste

1/2 cup round peppermint candies or candy canes, crushed (about 15 candies)

Instructions

Place the ice cream in a large bowl and leave it out for about a half an hour until it is soft and workable.

In a small bowl, melt the white chocolate in the microwave. Melt for 20 seconds, stir, then stir every 10 seconds after that until it is mostly smooth. Some little lumps are okay.

Immediately add in the vanilla bean paste to the chocolate. Stir quickly and then mix all of it into the vanilla ice cream, stirring with a large spoon. There will be some steaks of white chocolate, but that's a good thing.

Gently stir in most of the peppermint, reserving some to sprinkle on top of each serving. Transfer the mixture to a 2-quart baking dish or large tupperware. Freeze until firm, about 3-4 hours. Sprinkle with remaining peppermint and serve.

Notes

If you don't have any vanilla bean paste, sub vanilla extract. But you really should invest in some paste, it is liquid gold!

You can crush the peppermint candy as little or as much as you want, it just depends on how chunky you want your ice cream.