A taste of summer - homemade ice cream
I don’t know anyone that passes up ice cream. And many of us guilty have been guilty of scraping the bottom of a 1/2 gallon container in one or two sittings. It’s no wonder why the Briq’s one pound cone is famous. But with a homemade ice cream maker, I can make a small batch that I don’t need to feel committed to eating an entire gallon.
The face (hidden under all the ice cream) says it all!
Summer indulgence
I have been able to steer clear of desserts almost entirely since October, but I have to admit have splurged on ice cream more than once summer has hit. In my opinion, there is no better summer indulgence than ice cream. And my youngest daughter agrees, choosing ice cream over birthday cake for her birthday.
I usually resist the temptation to buy ice cream from the store. But once it enters my home, I struggle to stop until it's gone. Once, my husband marked the level in the container to be a deterrent from me consuming several times more than the 1/2 cup serving (who in the world can stop at 1/2 cup?!?)
Homemade ice cream
Now just because we don’t often buy ice cream from the store doesn’t mean we don’t often enjoy, especially over the summer. We usually like to make homemade ice cream, sometimes several times a week.
I love soft-serve, so a homemade batch is the perfect way to enjoy the creamy texture without leaving the house. We also enjoy experimenting with different flavors - pumpkin, peanut butter, rhubarb, blueberry, even once at the end of summer we dug up a lemon olive oil ice cream recipe to mix it up; however, one of my favorites is still plain vanilla.
Our last batch never even made it into bowls before it was gone!
First homemade ice cream experience
The first time my husband and I attempted homemade ice cream, we ended up with a memorable experience. My husband and I were newlyweds and he inherited an old fashioned ice cream maker. We had to spin by hand and use salted ice water to freeze it. We knew it would take a while so we took turns spinning (since it got tiring) while consolidating our households. Forty-five minutes later, we had made some progress, selecting which one of the eight whisks to keep, but still had no ice cream. The carrot peeler, however, became a heated debate, as neither of us would get rid of our carrot peeler and ended in a stalemate, just like the ice cream - since the ice had now melted. We decided to keep both peelers as we slurped up our milkshakes. (It wasn’t until months later we realized that my righty husband had a right-handed carrot peeler, and I, a lefty, had a left-handed carrot peeler!)
More homemade disasters
And that’s only the beginning of our ice cream disasters. My sister gifted me with an automatic ice cream maker for Christmas after hearing my first ice cream story. Now we just have to pre-freeze the ring, turn the ice cream maker on to churn the ice cream, and add the ingredients. Pretty fool-proof right? Not for me. I’ve managed to add plenty more disastrous ice cream experiences to the list:
1) I forgot to turn on the ice cream maker before I added the ingredients. When I turned on the ice cream maker, it couldn’t churn the ice cream as everything had turned into a solid rock in seconds. The only thing I could do was let it melt, and try again the next day. Unfortunately for me (but fitting), I was flying out of the country so I missed out altogether.
2) Turns out our chest freezer isn’t quite as cold as our fridge’s freezer - so whenever I forget this we end up with milkshakes.
3) We usually make a 1/2 batch. So when I make a full batch and then add extra ingredients to create our own concoctions I’ve forgotten (more than once) that our volume is more than a regular batch. When the ice cream maker is churning, the ingredients overflow and make a huge mess on the counter. Once it leaked into the machine and we thought it was toast. We were lucky and were able to salvage our ice cream maker.
But we’ve also had so many wonderful spoonfuls that we just can’t stop! Here’s one of my favorite concoctions - pumpkin ice cream.
We all scrape our bowls to get every last bit of the yummy treat.
Pumpkin ice cream recipe
1 c. heavy whipping cream
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. milk
Pinch of salt
1/3 can of pumpkin
1 t. vanilla
Pinch of cloves
1 t. ginger
1/2 t. nutmeg
1) Turn on the ice cream maker!
2) Add heavy whipping cream followed by sugar, milk, salt, pumpkin, vanilla, and spices.
3) Once reaching your desired consistency, enjoy the ice cream!
Note that there is no cinnamon - when I created this recipe I forgot to add cinnamon and liked it so much that I now intentionally omit cinnamon from my recipe.