I love making homemade ice cream. Well, actually, let me rephrase that: I love
eating homemade ice cream. Growing up, I can't remember a family get together that didn't include homemade ice cream. I can remember hearing the machine churn and feeling like it took
forever for it to be ready. It seemed like an all day process. But man, once it was done, you couldn't beat it. No store-bought variety stands a chance. (Well, Blue Bell's Natural Vanilla Bean is the closest there is, but it's still not "homemade".) And once you pour some chocolate syrup on it (from the Hershey's can, not the squeeze bottle--I don't know what the difference is but it makes
all the difference), woooo, stand back! I still carry those memories around with me, and every summer,
I--not the kids--add "make homemade ice cream" to our summer list in an effort to grab a piece of that nostalgia. However, the "day-long" process is engrained in my head, so I never get up the courage to make it. Seriously, who has time to spend all day nursing a loud, churning ice cream machine taking up your kitchen sink?? (except for when my parents are in town and I can talk them into making for me) :) Well, in reality, anyone who has made ice cream in a machine knows it doesn't actually take
all day to make it. Forty-five minutes is probably more accurate (maybe even less). But I guess to an anxious kid, 45 minutes
is all day. But back to my present dilemma, even though I know the reality, I still haven't talked myself into tackling it. But, I found the next best thing. My summer issue of Family Fun magazine had a fun idea--ice cream in a bag! Easy, fun, busy activity for the kids that ends in a tasty treat? Who can beat that!! And I finally get to cross it off our summer list.
Here's the scoop:
Combine
2 tablespoons sugar,
1 cup half and half, and a
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract in a pint-size ziplock bag and seal it tightly. Place
1/2 cup coarse salt (or table salt) in a gallon-size bag, then fill it halfway with
ice cubes. Place the sealed smaller bag inside as well, and seal the larger bag. Shake the bags until the ice cream mixture hardens, about 5 minutes. (Feel the small bag to determine when it's done.) Take the smaller bag our of the larger one, and eat the ice cream right out of the bag!
Here it is "pre-shake"
Since it was really cold and our arms got tired of shaking the bag, we wrapped it in a towell and rolled the towel back and forth on the table until the ice cream was firm enough for our liking. (One piece of advice: before you open your small bag to eat the ice cream, rinse the bag off to get all the salt water off the opening of the bag.)
Here's our final result! Yum!!
2 comments:
Wow, that is awesome. Is it still summer? I'd like to quickly put that on my list. So cool, can't wait to try it, seems so easy, it's hard to believe.
What fun, same as Dad and my memory when we were kids. Making homemade ice cream back then was buying a block of ice (because it was cheaper and crushed ice would melt faster when transporting it in an unconditioned vehicle out to the farm), chopping it up in a wash tub, filling the ice cream maker with the ice, pouring lots of coarse salt on top, and covering it with an old towel. The little kids would take turns sitting on top of the ice cream maker while the older ones turned the hand crank till it got too hard to turn. Sitting on top of the maker was necessary to keep it from turning and twisting around as it was being hand cranked. The anticipation was too much for the little kids as it seemed to take sooooo long that the older ones would tell stories to help make the cranking time go faster. It was so yummy and special with the Hershey's chocolate syrup from the can. Funny thing, while of course Dad and I didn't know each other then, we both had the same experience. Family fun memories are priceless. Keep making memories!! Love y'all, Mom and Dad
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