I was wondering around the Florida – Eat Wild site thinking about getting a grass finished cow (split with friends of course, even I can’t eat that much beef) and somehow ended up at Where can I find raw milk in Florida? (for my dog – no raw diary products for human consumption in Florida)
I noticed an entry for Heart of Christmas Farms that said they have raw milk products available at the Brevard County Farmers Market. The last “farmer’s market” I went to locally ended up being more of a flea market, one stand had fruit and veggies, mostly imported. I think they had one small box of cukes that was locally grown. I checked out the their web page and they noted that “our farmers are local.”
Sounded good to me. The market is open on Thursdays from 3pm to 7pm so I took off a bit early from work to check things out. I shouldn’t have bothered with the early part, folks were still setting up when I got there around 4. I quickly found a table with raw milk products and scored a quart of raw cream and a pound of raw butter. It was $10 each. Not that bad a price for the butter, the grass fed Pastureland Butter from Slanker’s is $8.78 a pound and the Keri Gold Butter from Publix is even more at $5.99 for a half pound.
I used 3 cups of the cream with 6 whole eggs and a bit of vanilla flavoring to make ice cream. The recipe I had for Zero Carb ice cream calls for 12 eggs but I only had the half dozen so I went with it. I added a 1/4 cup of sugar because I thought Karen might like some and I wasn’t sure how sweet the cream would be by itself.
It was plenty sweet for me, we added some pineapple from my garden to boost that. Next time I think I will go with the 12 eggs, separated. Mix the yolks and cream and then whip the whites up and fold them in. See if I can get a little more air in the mixture prior to freezing. I had to let the finished ice cream sit on the counter for a few minutes before I could serve it. My Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker was struggling, there was a shell of really hard frozen ice cream around the edges of the bowl and a bunch of less frozen stuff. I chipped it out and mixed it in with the other prior to freezing and it messed up the texture just a bit I think.
If I make more of this stuff, I think I will have to look for a better quality ice cream maker.