Vanilla Bean Ice Cream in the new White Mountain Junior!

This year for my birthday I received a wonderfully big surprise in a very small package. Turns out that Big D, my dad, and Thibault conspired to find the world’s smallest White Mountain Freezer and sent it for my birthday. After the usual debacle with Parcel Farce, I received the newest edition to our White Mountain arsenal the day after my birthday. The picture below should give it some scale. This is the White Mountain Junior inside a six-quart freezer.

the Junior inside a six-quart freezer

We measured the can and decided it could handle just shy of a cup and a half of mix, which is a tricky figure for scaling down the family recipe. We worked with some rough guesses and came up with the following:

  • just under a quarter cup of sugar
  • around a tablespoon of beaten egg
  • about a half cup of double cream
  • and a little bit of milk
  • vanilla

just under a quarter-cup of sugar

about a tablespoon of egg

about a half cup of cream

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Oddly enough, we have yet to discuss the best way to make vanilla ice cream on this blog. For the last couple batches I made, I did it properly, using a vanilla bean. The method is easy, but it takes some advanced preparation. First, cut open the bean by running a knife along its length. Then scrape all the little seeds into the milk. Leave the vanilla in the milk to soak overnight or at least a good few hours. Meanwhile take the now empty bean and stick it in a bag of sugar. The sugar will absorb the vanilla flavour in a few hours and become “vanilla sugar”. If you use this vanilla sugar and vanilla milk in the mix, the flavour is the best you can get. Plus, if you always keep a vanilla bean in your sugar supply, you can get a great subtle vanilla flavour without any prep.

Cranking the Junior

The Junior bucket does not leave a lot of space around the can for ice cubes, so we decided we should break the ice up and mix it with salt separately. Then we just spooned in salty slush around the sides of the can.

the prepared mix in the junior can

Also the drain-hole on the side of the bucket is relatively low, and means that you won’t have any cold brine around the top third of the can. We modified one of Big D’s super-expensive wine-corks to fit the hole and were careful to keep an eye on the water level.

cranking the junior

Peter's new toy!

The White Mountain Junior is not actually triple motion, but since it’s so small, the single-motion action did a very good job. I was a little worried about breaking the tiny mechanism, but it held out, and delivered a velvety delicious ice cream. There was just enough for two small bowls and it all disappeared in just a few seconds!

We are looking forward to experimenting with new flavours in small batches in this fantastic little machine.

the finished batch

Peter licking the paddles

Big D balancing a White Mountain on his head


Posted

in

, ,

by

Tags:

Comments

5 responses to “Vanilla Bean Ice Cream in the new White Mountain Junior!”

  1. Aunt Nancy* Avatar
    Aunt Nancy*

    I’m thrilled that you made ice cream in the birthday Junior! No one deserves a treasure like this any more than our own ice cream man, Peter!! I wish I could have had a taste.

  2. cole Avatar
    cole

    so cool!

  3. JP Avatar
    JP

    Well I screwed up last summer by not buying an original (antique) Salesman Sample “Jr” when I had the chance. After rethinking it, I went back and obviously it was gone. So this summer I set out to find one, and settled, if you will on the newer, Jr., and finally just bought –paid more for it than I would have the original on Ebay, but I wanted it and was tired of “pondering” it watching it also sell for less on Ebay. We (baby boomers) swore off ice cream upon the onset on high cholestrol and higher BP’s – and we do just fine with that. But there are those times, you wish you had a small bowl and in our area, you drive 6 miles to the mini mart that closes at 10pm.

    My JR didn’t come with a recipe booklet, so I was thrilled to find you’d done the work for me. I’m planning on going to my mom’s cookbook at look at her recipe from the 60’s for which we had tons of ice cream all summer long (amazingly enough we never gained weight). Anyway…thanks again for your posting. I look forward to trying it out in the near future!

    Kindest Regards

  4. Peter Gerard Avatar

    Hi JP, I’m happy you’re finding our recipes useful. Please let us know how you get on with your Junior. It’s a great little machine!

  5. Neill Avatar
    Neill

    How cool. I’m 72 and made ice cream in my JR back in the 1950’s. My aunt owned an antique shop in Pasadena, CA and give me a JR. AND YES, I STILL HAVE IT. It’s older than yours because the crank knob is a fixed metal piece where the wood knobs showed up later.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.