Easy Homemade Ice Cream

We’ve been friends for a while now. You have faithfully read my silly stories and hopefully braved a few recipes, so I think it’s time I shared my signature dish with you. Actually, it’s a signature bowl.  A bowl of ice cream!!

  I don’t know exactly when I became famous for ice cream, but my farm days in Kona really ramped up the reputation.  I worked my crews really hard, but they happily did anything I asked because they knew on Friday I would have two gallons of homemade ice cream churning as they wrapped up the day. Each week they voted on flavors and I’d make whatever they requested.  Coffee, strawberry, mango, ginger, Oreo mint, lemon lavender, passion fruit, peanut butter- we had a lot of yummy experiments.   Some of them had NEVER tasted homemade ice cream before- so I dedicated myself to erasing homemade ice cream poverty.  Today I am making a huge leap in this effort by sharing my secrets with you.

I grew up in an ice cream consuming family.  My mom made ice cream regularly (Dad did the messy part of breaking up the ice and getting it churned).  At some point after leaving home I had him teach me the tricks and every now and then I’d make a gallon the old fashioned way- crushing ice and layering salt.  It was messy and a bit time consuming, but still easier than baking a cake (and so often cakes didn’t turn out- but ice cream always did!)  But it was too much effort (and I usually didn’t have enough ice on hand) to whip up a batch go with an impromptu pan of brownies or apple pie, and I ‘d end up having someone bring a bit of vanilla ice cream to go with dessert.  Then one day I saw one of these miracle machines!

No ice or salt required, no frozen hands, no salty mess to clean up- just pop the frozen bowl in the mixer and flip a switch.   We store the bowl in the freezer so it’s ALWAYS ready to go; one never knows when the ice cream itch might attack and we believe in preparation around here.

 There are loads of ice cream recipes- and no doubt many of them are better than mine.  The beauty of mine is it’s simple, customizable and fast.  We tend to like a little less sugar than most recipes- so feel free to adjust sweetness as you like it.

Recipe for 2-quart machine

6 cups of half and half.  You can use milk, almond milk, whipping cream (though most people mix cream with milk or it’s just too think) yogurt, coconut milk- whatever your little frozen heart desires

1-1.5 cups sugar (can also use honey but will need to warm some milk and dissolve it in) or stevia- I’ve made lots of low carb ice cream with stevia!

1-2 tsp vanilla  (I use almond extract with blueberries.  I have also skipped vanilla and used essential oils for flavoring- orange, lavender, lemon, mint, rosemary…..)

Just mix and pour into the maker.  It’s that simple.

Customizing

Peanut butter- mix ½ cup peanut butter in blender with part of the cream and then add in rest of ingredients

Chocolate- 1/3-1/2 cup cocoa powder

Coffee- you can dissolve instant coffee into some warm cream (maybe 3 TBSP or so).  I used to infuse half of the cream with ground coffee and then strain the coffee beans out, but after dozens of batches I found that finely ground coffee beans worked wonderfully as a direct addition.  ¼-1/3 cup finely ground coffee beans to above recipe is great.

Berries- replace a cup of cream with 1-1.5 cups of crushed or blended berries.  Decrease the sugar a bit if using sweet berries

Lemon lavender- this is one of my most requested flavors.  I used to mix a cup of lemon juice in the cream, but now I just use the zest of 2 lemons and 5-8 drops of lavender essential oil.

Most fruits- replace 1 cup of cream with 1- 1.5 cups pureed fruit

Mint Oreo- Crush 10-15 cookies and add to cream along with 3-4 drops peppermint essential oil or 1 tsp mint extract.  The cookies almost dissolve in the mixing- if you want bigger chunks then just stir them in at the very end.

Now I suppose next you are going to beg for my famous no fuss hot fudge recipe

                                     If you give a mouse a cookie……