Thursday, June 24, 2010

Homemade ice cream fun!

My Aunt found a fun and simple recipe for homemade ice cream from Family Fun Magazine so yesterday we gave it a shot! The kids had fun and more importantly, the ice cream was yummers. At first bite the taste was so familiar to me. I knew I had had this ice cream before but I couldn't figure out when or where. Then last night while my brain was thinking instead of sleeping (grrrrrrr) it came to me. I had it when I was a kid!!! You see my grandma bought me a Barbie ice cream maker and this ice cream tasted exactly the same. Nothing like doing something for my kids that brings back memories of my childhood. Things are always better the second time around!

So here is the directions for this super fun and WAY better then that stuff "they" call ice cream that comes in a carton :)

Forget endlessly cranking the handle of an ice-cream maker. After combining the ingredients, each guest can simply shake up his or her own pouch of soft serve--and it's done in just 5 minutes.
Ingredients
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 cup half and half
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup salt (The bigger the granules, the better. Kosher or rock salt works best, but table salt is fine.)
  • Ice cubes (enough to fill each gallon-size bag about half full)
  • 1 pint-size ziplock bag
  • 1 gallon-size ziplock bag

Instructions
  1. Combine the sugar, half and half, and vanilla extract in the pint-size bag and seal it tightly.
  2. Place the salt and ice in the gallon-size bag, then place the sealed smaller bag inside as well. Seal the larger bag. Now shake the bags until the mixture hardens (about 5 minutes). Feel the small bag to determine when it's done.
  3. Take the smaller bag out of the larger one, add mix-ins, and eat the ice cream right out of the bag. Easy cleanup too! Serves 1.

    My additional tips-
    1.The rock salt makes the ice really cold so you may want to offer gloves to the little ones. 2.We had made a few batches right away and a few batches after the ice had melted a bit and it seemed to work the second time so I would recommend making up the ice bags first and letting them sit a bit while you make the ice cream bag.
    3. We double bagged our pint size bags just in case.

     

2 comments:

flynnfamily said...

looks good! When I used to work at day camps we would use chocolate milk and it worked great!

Rachel said...

We've done this before but that was back when Alex was still allergic to milk. (It was part of a co-op class. She still enjoyed making it and was fine with mom eating it.) We'll have to do it again now that she can eat it too.