Monday, April 21, 2008

I scream, you scream.....


....we all scream for ice cream. That's right! I made ice cream this weekend - without an ice cream maker. I was surprised how easy it was. It just took time. First I found an easy no-cook vanilla recipe on-line (milk from dairy; heavy cream, salt, sugar, and organic vanilla from grocery). You pretty much just dump everything in a bowl and mix with a whisk. Now here's time consuming part, though there isn't much labor involved:

I put the mixture in a tupperware bowl with a lid and put in the fridge to cool for 2 hours. After 2 hours, mix with a whisk and transfer to freezer. Every 30 minutes, take the mix out of the freezer and whisk again for about 30-60 seconds. This keeps ice crystals from forming Each time it should be just a little thicker. Go through this process three times whisking and freezing, whisking and freezing, whisking and freezing....and then allow to freeze until your desired consistency (we did overnight). Super Easy! Tastes great too with a really nice flavor. Our only complaint was that it was just a little icy vs super creamy. So I think what I would do differently would be to put it in a shallower pan rather than a bowl. It will freeze more quickly that way and I think that since you would be whisking further into the process it will be creamier (freezing overnight without whisking would allow for more ice crystals than it freezing within an hour or so of the last whisking. Does that make sense?)

I wanted to try this since we're having a few people over this weekend for a birthday party (more on the celebrations in a future post) and wanted to follow the local diet guidelines (buy what you can locally and make everything else from scratch). Hmm. I suppose we will just have to eat and make ice cream all week to get the process right. Isn't that a shame?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Woo Hoo! Homeade ice cream....
Once you start getting some local fruit in, the options will be endless!

Anonymous said...

Alternately, you could grab some dry ice from your local welding supply store and use that to quick-freeze the ice cream. I'm told that eliminates ice crystal formation and leads to super-smooth ice cream.

hmd said...

Jim, one of Dave's lunch buddies, has generously donated his ice cream maker (actually a super duper cool Kitchenaid stand mixer with an ice cream maker attachment) to make this weekend's ice cream. We're talking serious machinery here! He he! The bowl is in the freezer now. I'll keep everyone up to date!

Marius - cool idea! We'll have to try that too. I picked up a packet of dry ice at Kroger once years ago. Maybe they still carry them. Much cheaper than buying a whole mixer :)