Preperation Time : 20 minutes
Churn Time : 40 - 60 minutes (depending on ice cream maker)
Yield : about 1 quart
This recipe starts with a story... making homemade ice cream really began for me back when I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in the Great Ohio! It was there that I had my first opportunity to experiment with homemade Ice Cream. :-)
Growing up, I do not recall ever having had homemade Ice Cream. My father did experiment with a couple of tasty recipes sort of like ice cream, but we did not own an ice cream maker. Actually, the icy cold recipe that my Dad was famous for was homemade pressurized Root Beer made from Hires Extract and dry ice!For many years (during our time living in Orem and Provo), my Father owned this large, heavy, steel pressure cooker that was perfect for making root beer! At least, that's all I ever remember it having been used for. It had clamps on the sides to secure the lid, and a pressure gauge that rather got my imagination going because I remember the "red danger" zone. One of my early real-world physics lessons occurred the first time my father demonstrated the art of carbonating root beer in the kitchen!
I watched with fascination as my Dad added the necessary water, sugar, and extract. Then, after dropping in the block of dry ice, he quickly clamped the lid down! The pressure built rapidly, so if he wasn't quick enough, the mounting pressure would "pop the lid" and he would have to clamp it down again. A small steel stem rose from the surface of the lid, and allowed the carbon dioxide gas to escape. This kept the pressure cooker from exploding. To keep the pressure just right, you placed a little steel weight on the escape nozzle. Once placed, the hissing immediately ceased, and the pressure would build! Presently it reached a point at which the pressure actually lifted the steel weight, which would then start "dancing" on the nozzle, making little hissing sounds. This equalized pressure prevented a balance of carbon dioxide (released from the melting dry ice) from escaping, effectively infusing it within the root beer brew. :-)
As a young boy of nine or ten, I remember sneaking into the kitchen whilst the root beer was pressurizing. I was fascinated with the little weight as it hissed and danced, and presently I realized that if I pushed it down, my own strength stopped the carbon dioxide gas from escaping! What joy! What fun! I closely watched the pressure gauge as it steadily climbed. Growing concerned, I released it after a few moments, and the weight would dance frantically for several seconds, and then slow back down. Fascinating! Fortunately I wasn't foolish enough to hold it down too long.
Although I do have a memory which is likely a dream. In it, I was helping prepare for my Dad's birthday party while a batch of my Dad's famous root beer was being prepared. Nobody was monitoring the pressure cooker, and the weight somehow became jammed. The pressure built and built unchecked. Then we heard a loud BANG! The house seemed to shake just a bit, and it sounded as though a train had derailed. Running into the kitchen we saw the pressure cooker with dry ice mist billowing up while root beer rained gently from the ceiling. Looking up, we saw the steel lid of the cooker stuck in the ceiling! The pressure from the explosion had sent the lid sailing right up into the ceiling, embedding it firmly in the underlying sheet-rock! After that, the pressure cooker always sort of scared me.
But that's not the story I was going to tell... 😏 The actual story occurred much later, when I was 20 years old. While I was serving my mission, my missionary companion and I found an old wooden ice cream maker in the closet, left from a previous missionary. Unfortunately it had a leak in the barrel, and it was a "manual crank" ice cream maker. We prepared the recipe that came with the box, and then we poured ice along the sides of the canister, but we didn't know it required salt to lower the melting point of the ice. We used sweetened condensed milk in the recipe, so it was extremely rich. It sure looked like it would make delicious ice cream! We sealed the canister and excitedly took turns churning it!
Well, we were novices at the art of ice cream making, and after nearly an hour of taking turns cranking it, we eagerly opened the aluminum container to see what we had produced! we couldn't figure out why the ice cream mixture hadn't risen! On the contrary, it had actually sank! Well, it was fairly cold, and it did look sort of like ice cream... but it was DENSE! Very, very dense! Years later I realized that because of the difficulties we encountered, and the lack of rock salt having been added, the ice cream maker never froze it properly. The temperature never got cold enough. The ingredients also settled and became more compact, rather than filling with the necessary tiny air bubbles and expanding as it should have. That's the secret to making it creamy! Instead we ended up with a dense, circular slab of frozen cream, probably 200 calories per tablespoon! Instead of making 1½ quarts of creamy ice cream, it made 2 cups of collapsed, super rich calories.
So, after that I gave up on homemade ice cream... for about two decades.
Then, fairly early on in my marriage, when my oldest daughter had just entered Elementary School, I chanced upon an electric ice cream maker at a local thrift store! I purchased it excitedly, brought it home, and sadly discovered that the motor was weak, and it promptly burned out on my first attempt to make ice cream. So, I donated it to our local landfill. Discouraged, I decided ice cream was much easier to buy!Then a few years ago, I decided to try my luck once more and purchased an electric RIVAL ice cream maker from a garage sale down the street.
It had a cute invisible penguin on the side of the basin that appeared and darkened when the temperature dropped and became cold enough. Hoping that the proverbial "third time" was the charm, I tested it for the first time last summer. And it worked!!! It made delicious ice cream. But it took some effort and research to understand what worked, and what didn't. I had read through a dozen recipes, discounting the more complex recipes as unnecessary for my needs. In fact, I disregarded any recipe that required boiling the milk and cream first (i.e. scalding the milk), as heating it too long or high would ruin it! And even if you cooked it just right, you would still need to wait additional time for it to chill. Often a couple of hours or even overnight. While this technique does make it creamier, I have found that chilling it alone--and bypassing the additional steps--makes it plenty creamy. The physical churning process of an electric ice cream maker does just great. Perhaps I am missing out on true old-fashioned ice cream this way, but the time I save by skipping and chilling the cream makes it well worth it. I still chill the canister. In the end, my "express" approach is very yummy!
And now... for the rest of the story! Or in this case, the actual recipe!
First, let me say how delicious homemade ice cream is! Keep in mind, though, that the cost of ingredients (including bagged ice and rock salt) is more expensive then just purchasing a half gallon from your local grocery store. But what a fun family activity making ice cream from scratch can be!Someone once said, "Ice cream is usually considered to be junk food." And certainly the mass-produced stuff sold by the cardboard or plastic carton definitely falls into the category of something we shouldn’t eat very often. It is yummy enough, and I have bought many dozens of cartons through the years. Unfortunately, many store-bought ice creams contain all sorts of fillers and chemicals– and often low-quality, skim milk. So, the biggest advantage of making homemade ice cream is the quality ingredients you have the option of using. I suppose it almost turns into a "healthy food." Almost! ;-)
Ingredients:
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream
- 2 cups whole milk
- 1/2 – 3/4 cups of sugar
- 2 Tablespoons vanilla extract
- Pinch of sea salt
- 1 vanilla bean (optional- see note below)
- Combine the milk, sugar, and vanilla beans (if using) in a blender.
- Half'n'Half works great too!
- For greater nutrition, try skipping the cream and using 4 cups whole milk instead! It worked just fine.
- The vanilla beans are optional- however they do add a nice bit of extra flavor, as well as the classic “bean specks.”
- Wash and dry all parts and equipment that will come into contact with the ice cream.
- Except the motor drive assembly, of course... don't wash that!
- Place the metal canister in the freezer to get it chilling.
- Combine the milk and cream, sugar, vanilla extract, and salt.
- If using a real vanilla bean, thoroughly blend until the bean is chopped into teeny tiny pieces!
- Blend until everything is combined.
- Pour chilled ice cream mixture into cooled canister.
- Important!!! Fill Ice Cream canister only 3/4 full! Mixture will expand during freezing.
- Place canister in your ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions.
Ice Cream Machine Instructions:
- These directions are fairly standard, so give 'em a whirl, but please use your device instructions if you have them! If not, do a search for your ice cream maker model on the World Wide Web.
- Insert DASHER (aka plastic beater) into canister, centering it in the bottom indentation.
- Place cover on Canister.
- Gently set canister into Ice Cream Bucket. Ensure that canister is centered and that it engages with the bottom of the bucket.
- Place Motor Drive over ice cream canister so that the stem of the dasher engages the shaft of the motor drive (top).
- Rotate canister slightly until the motor drive engages the cover of the ice cream canister.
- Fit the four tabs (bottom of motor drive) into the matching set of holes found on the top edges of the bucket. Rotate the motor drive counter clockwise to secure to bucket.
- Plug the power cord into a convenient outlet; make sure the cord is placed so that it is protected from the feet of wandering children or distracted adults.
- Once plugged in, the motor will immediately engage. At this point, the bucket should be empty except for the ice cream canister and mixture.
- While the ice cream maker is running, distribute 2 inches of ice around the bottom of the bucket.
- Sprinkle approximately ¼ cup of salt. uniformly over the first layer of ice.
- Note that the dasher within the dasher does not move. The ice cream canister rotates around it.
- Continue to add layers of ice, with salt between layers, until ice level reaches the top of the rotating canister.
- Churning should complete between 30 - 40 minutes, or until the motor stops (when thick).
- Adding Mix-in's. Five minutes before completion is a great time to add any mix-in's.
- Unplug the motor and detach and remove the motor drive assembly.
- Clear the ice and salt away from the top of the ice cream canister.
- Wipe carefully to remove any accumulated salt and water before removing the cover.
- Lift out dasher and scrape clean with a rubber spatula, or simply hand it to an eager child!
- Pack ice cream down into ice cream canister since the dasher will have left air pockets.
- Serve and enjoy! Best and creamiest when fresh from canister, though it freezes well.
There are two good ways to add your favorite mix-ins to an ice cream base! The first is to add them while the ice cream is still churning. Add your ice cream mix-ins just before your ice cream is finished. They only need to mix for a few minutes. Five minutes should be plenty.
Alternatively, once your ice cream is complete, use a large spatula to gently fold the ingredients into your ice cream. This is a great way to handle more delicate ingredients like fresh berries. It also means you can make one batch of ice cream and turn it into several flavors. This is perfect for families with different tastes. Everyone can have their own special bowl of ice cream. :-)
Mix-in Ideas :
- Chocolate Chips - classic flavour and one of the easiest options.
- Mini M'n'M's. This is my children's favorite thing to add!
- Cookies & Candy - Break up cookies and candy bars into small pieces and they are perfect additions to many ice cream flavors!
- Cookies & Cream - most recognizable is small chunks of Oreo sandwich cookies.
- Fresh Fruit - Stick with fruits that have a great texture when frozen. Strawberries, cherries, and blueberries are great choices. Just give 'em a rough chop and toss them into your ice cream. Try tropical fruits like pineapple and mango, although you will want to dice these fruits into even smaller pieces.
- Nuts - Almonds, peanuts, walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts, and cashews all make great additions to ice cream. Think about how they are used in traditional flavors like Rocky Road.
- Should the ice cream maker stop before the churning is complete, check to see if large ice cubes are jammed against the rotating ice cream canister.
- Since this recipe is completely uncooked, it is a good time to use raw milk and cream, if you have them. If not, then try to choose the best quality milk you have available.
- In case you missed it above, fill Ice Cream canister only 3/4 full! Mixture will expand significantly during the freezing process.
- Some people swear that homemade ice cream is a great use of goats milk! I haven't tried that.
Ummm... do I win the prize for the longest recipe description? ;-)
It was a journey... so hop on and enjoy!
