Now, come on, who doesn't like ice cream??  There are loads of flavours available nowadays, but the most popular is still Vanilla.

A good vanilla ice cream is wonderfully creamy and delicious. We won't talk about the cheap ones!  You can have vanilla ice cream with a lot of different things, chocolate cake, pies, and crumbles, to name a few. But it is just as fantastic on its own. 

Vanilla ice cream is made by cooling a mix of vanilla, sugar and cream. Originally, it was cooled over a container of salt and ice. The rest, as they say, is history.

Who do we have to thank for this delicious food?
Ice cream can be traced back to the 14th century. Some proof exists that it was first served in the Yuan period in the Mogul Court.
It then spread to Spain between 711 and 1492, and then the Italians got involved. 
In the early 18th Century, there were recipes for it in France, and they added egg yolks for a richer smoother food. 

Vanilla was first used by the Mexican people. By the 1500s, the Spanish, who were exploring what we now call Mexico, found it so popular there that they took it back to Spain.
The Spanish added it to flavour a chocolate drink of honey, water, corn, vanilla, and cacao beans. This drink spread to France and England, then Europe by the 1600s, and then Hugh Moran, the Apothecary of Queen Elizabeth I, said that vanilla should be used separately from cocoa. This was when the French started to use vanilla a lot without cocoa and began to flavour ice cream with it. 
Thomas Jefferson discovered vanilla ice cream in France and brought the recipe back to the United States, where the natural colour of the ice cream was brown. 

To celebrate today, treat yourself to some delicious good vanilla ice cream, or even better make some yourself, you can't beat it. Some recipes require an ice cream maker, but there are plenty online that don't, so give one a go or try this one :

• Two teaspoons of vanilla extract

• One cup of sugar

• Two cups of half-and-half cream

• Two cups of heavy whipping cream

• Now, grab a large bowl and mix all of the ingredients together until the sugar has dissolved. It is important to make sure that all of the sugar has fully dissolved before you freeze the mixture, as this will create the smoothest texture.

• Once everything is mixed, transfer the mixture to the cold pan, and put it in the freezer for around 30 minutes. Once that time has passed, take a good look at your creation. If the edges of it have begun the freezing process, you should take the mixture out of the freezer and use a hand mixer to beat it. Breaking up the ice cream in this way is what will help to make it creamy and smooth. However, don’t go overboard! You don’t want to beat the mixture too much!

• You should then return the mixture to the freezer. Around every 30 minutes, you should repeat the process of beating the mixture. Keep doing this until the ice cream has frozen completely. This will usually take around four or five sessions of beating the ice cream.
  If you notice that the ice cream has become too hard at any point, simply put it in the fridge until it becomes soft enough to beat again.

• Store the ice cream in your freezer in a covered container until you are ready to eat it.

When ready to eat, invite some friends around to enjoy it with you. You can also make vanilla ice cream cocktails or add it to things like banana splits, knickerbocker glories, etc. but whatever you do, enjoy it.

Today, post all things relating to vanilla ice cream: pics, music, etc. etc. and have fun with some delicious ice cream!