Eggnog: A Mind of Its Own...Result A Small Batch

For the very FEW readers I have you folks might remember last year I blogged about making eggnog. And tonight I got together with my daughter, her boyfriend and Mr. Red Molly and we commenced to making a few batches of eggnog while drinking and eating delivery pizza. My daughter, her boyfriend and I worked on getting all of the eggnog ingredients together. We put them in a make shift double boiler starting with 2 quarts of half and half, adding 14 egg yolks and 2 cups of confectionery sugar and started that cooking. However, while taking a break to eat pizza and have a drink or two,the eggnog mixture got too hot and broke or curdled or whatever you want to call it. We tried straining it twice but it was still in an unappetizing state so we decided to put it in the ice cream freezer and make custard ice cream. That went relativity well and after about 3o minutes of it running in the machine we had a somewhat soft serve ice cream concoction. I served a small bowl of it to Mr. Red Molly and myself and as I was eating it I noticed that it had become smooth again and did not have the curdled texture. At that point I took the remaining batch of the "ice cream" and dumped it into a mixing bowl added some brandy mixed it up, poured it into my milk bottle I brought back from France last year and wha-la I had myself a small batch of some mighty good eggnog. And to think I almost threw it out. It is a total mystery as to how it resurrected itself from a curdled mess to a very nice smooth velvety yummy batch of eggnog.