Okay, it should be no secret by now that I love sweets and junk food. However, I am also very concerned about what goes into my food. I have concerns about overly-processed foods that contain all kinds of crazy chemicals that I can’t even pronounce. I try to take steps to learn how to make a lot of my foods homemade so that I know that the ingredients are natural. Ice cream is one of those foods that can have some of those crazy Chemistry-class-sounding chemicals. It’s also pretty easy to make at home, you just need an ice cream maker.
Ice cream makers have come a long way thanks to technology. My ice cream maker does all the work for me. I don’t need to use any salt or other crazy chemicals. I just freeze the insulated bowl (which has some sort of gel or coolant inside) and it spins around scraping the bottoms and sides as it freezes the liquid. I make Slushies in this thing as well.
Most of the ice cream recipes that I see lately are a custard base. The base contains eggs and cream or milk and you have to cook it before freezing it. However, I was able to find a really simple milk, sugar, and vanilla recipe that came out really awesome! See the recipe here. That’s right, I found this recipe at AllRecipes. After all of my complaining about that place, I found this little gem.
* 2 cups heavy whipping cream
* 2 cups half-and-half cream
* 3/4 cup white sugar
* 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
DIRECTIONS
1. In a large bowl, combine the heavy cream and the half and half. Gradually whisk in the sugar until blended.
2. Whisk in the vanilla. Refrigerate, covered, until very cold, at least 3 hours or as long as 3 days.
3. Whisk the mixture to blend and pour into the canister of an ice cream maker. Freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions. Eat at once or transfer to a covered container and freeze up to 8 hours.
The candy bars come into place like this: I have a LOT of leftover Easter candy in my house and have been looking for creative ways to get rid of it without actually wasting it. So I had about 2 cups of those little bite sized Snickers bars and I froze them, chopped them roughly, and threw them into the ice cream once it was almost ready to go into the freezer (i.e. still soft, but frozen).
I just let the ice cream maker do the mixing for me. Once everything is mixed I just threw it in the freezer for about 4 hours. Let me tell you that this was delicious and wonderful. It was a great base vanilla ice cream and the candy bar pieces were perfect.
This ice cream also benefits greatly from the addition of some chocolate syrup right before serving. But what doesn’t benefit from chocolate syrup? Nothing, that’s what. Enjoy!
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Oh yummm!!! Is there anyway to make this without the ice cream maker? long hours of slogging is ok…
Hmm, I’m pretty sure that you can make homemade ice cream by using the technique used to make semifreddo. Just put the chilled ice cream base in a shallow casserole or baking dish and freeze. Every hour or so, go in and scrape the ice cream off the bottom and sides (these are the parts that freeze first) with a fork. Just do this until it’s firm and fluffed, but not a solid block and then transfer to an airtight container. Hope this helps