Brielle's Avalon

It’s hot out, you have an abundance of eggs and plenty of milk. Run out, grab some cream, rock salt, a bag of ice and make home made ice cream! Make memories with friends and family. Anyway, I couldn’t find Mom’s recipe so I cobbled together a few similar ones from the internet. Mom made custard-based ice cream so those were the recipes I looked for.

Ingredients:

2c heavy cream

2c Milk

1c Sugar

8 eggs

1/2 tap salt

1 to 2 tsp vanilla

Rock salt and ice. These don’t go IN the ice cream, they’re to make the freezer work. While this is cooling you’ll need to run out for rock salt and ice…unless you already have the salt.

Mix cream and milk together with sugar over medium heat. Next time I’ll put at least 1/2 the sugar in the eggs.

While that’s warming, crack eggs into a bowl and whisk well until light yellow and fluffy. This time I used a regular whisk. Next time I’ll use a hand mixer and also add at least 1/2 the sugar to the eggs to help break them up.

When the sugar is dissolved and the milk is warm to the touch temper the eggs by slowly mixing in 1/2 c of the warm milk/cream.

Once that’s mixed well slowly add it to the warm milk/cream.

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon and leaves a trail when you wipe a finger through it. TAKE IT OFF THE HEAT IMMEDIATELY! DON’T LET IT BOIL! That will make it curdle and that’s bad.

Pour it into the ice cream freezer through a sieve. No matter how perfectly you cook the custard there will be a few lumps. I goofed and there were a lot of lumps this time. I let it start to boil and it curdled. I’ll do better next time. Sh! Don’t tell! It turned out OK in the end. Put this in the fridge to cool while you run out for ice or send someone out for ice so you can start dinner.

The custard is cool? Got ice? Got rock salt? YAY! Now you can put the ice maker together. Add the vanilla now and mix a bit when you put the dasher in. Put on the top. The custard might be too thin to add any fruit or chips or stuff, so after you’ve made a few batches you’ll know better when to add stuff so it doesn’t all sink to the bottom…now or 1/2 frozen.

Figure out how to get the top machine on the top of the dasher and affixed to the top of the outside body of the freezer. You have to hold your tongue just right as you bend your head upside down to see how the top of the container fits into the machine part, but you can do it! YAY! Done. now add a good layer of crushed ice, a layer of salt, another layer of ice, a layer of salt and do this til it’s full between the ice cream container and the outside housing. Keep the bag of ice in a bowl so it doesn’t flood the counter or table as it melts or, better yet, do this outside so it can water the grass or flowers and the noise doesn’t matter so much. Plug it in and wait. Add more ice and salt as the ice melts down. In about 30 minutes or so you’ll have ice cream. DO NOT TOSS THIS MELT-WATER AND ICE ON THE GRASS!!! THE SALT IS BAD FOR THE GRASS AND WILL ANNOY YOUR PARENTS!

When done pull out the dasher and scrape the ice cream off into a container that fits in your freezer.

Scoop out the rest of the ice cream from the container into the same new container, smoothe it out a bit and put it in the freezer to cure…til dinner’s over or until you just can’t stand it anymore (or can’t stand the kids’ sadfaces) and have to start scooping cones and sending the kids off to drip in the grass.

Adults can have 2 scoops in bowls with toppings. Somewhere in this blog I have recipes for easy strawberry syrup topping and chocolate fudge sauce. Bananas are good too, as is whipped cream (we cheated with the frozen canned kind. It makes a fun, fancy top). Cherries are nice on top, too. Sprinkles. Chocolate shavings. crushed cookies. Nuts. The options are almost endless.