Happy National Ice Cream Day

Our good friend Ronald Reagan who declared July to be National Ice Cream Month also declared the third Sunday in July to be National Ice Cream Day.

Rumor has it he was also a huge fan of jelly beans. In his honor, I made my Vanilla Bean Jelly Bean ice cream...

I have made this three times so far and each was a different kind of jelly bean.

I made a vanilla base, but instead of just using a vanilla extract, I use a vanilla bean paste (because I am too lazy for all the scraping of the vanilla beans) so I still get the specks of seeds.

The three jelly beans that I have tried are:

1. Regular, run of the mill Brach's Jelly Beans (the most common type around at Easter)
2. Starburst Jelly Beans (by special request of my sister)
   
3. Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream Creations Jelly Beans (I mean, c'mon, that's just a given!)
   

The key here is to make sure your beans aren't too big -- if I am using the large beans, I cut them in half. Also to make sure you don't tell your dentist you made and ate this ice cream -- the jelly beans become pretty hard and chewy.

Having tried them all, my vote is for option 1.

Happy National Ice Cream Day!

P.S. For a nice history of National Ice Cream Month, The Ice Cream Bloke writes a nice history on the Food Channel website.

Photo of Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream Creations Jelly Beans from the Jelly Belly site.