Summer Ice Cream

We've been to the berry patch.  It's one of my very favorite summer rites of passage.  A farm girl I clearly am not, but picking the berries at the local farm up the street seems like a great way to spend a morning.  I like buying from local farmers and making sure we eat what is in season.  The girls agree as long as I remember to bring the bug spray.  Which I did not today.  Ava insists she has a mosquito bite on her ear.  I think might have been a bit of drama for effect.  Will have to investigate the situation later.


This year to bribe, rather encourage, hearty child labor stooped low in the prickly black raspberry bushes, I promised culinary nirvana as long as enough berries were picked. 

HOME MADE ICE CREAM


Have you ever done this?  It is so stinking easy.   Last Christmas all Olivia wanted was an ice cream maker.  I haven't a clue where she got the idea, but one week before Christmas she would plead over and over again to Santa, if he was listening, please please bring me an ice cream maker.  I thought, great we've already purchased the Nintendo DS and now she wants a $200 ice cream maker?  Stab me in the eyeballs and get it over with.  Surprising enough, Santa found a $20 ice cream maker at the local Meijer.  Who knew?  Easy Peasy. A true Christmas miracle for sure.

Here is what you start with.  Common sense enough right? Ice cream needs ice and rock salt too.  And plenty of it. 

Then you need some able bodied child labor, looking to escape their kindergarten sight word work.  (That is what the awful colored index cards are in the back ground.)

See the inner cannister?  Here is what we put in it.

3 cups heavy whipping cream
3 cups milk 2%
1 1/2 cups Splenda/sugar mix
1Tbs. vanilla
1 Tbs. lemon juice

Then we added strawberries from the farm.  Lots of them.

I turned my back for 2 seconds and this is what happened. 

In the outer bucket we simply layered ice and about 3 cups of rock salt. 

We plugged in the machine and 30 minutes of grinding at ear deafening decibels that are almost intolerable unless you do this at 5pm and break down and sip a glass of wine, not that I'm saying that I did that, I'm just saying YOU might want to do that.  You get ice cream as your reward. 

Oh and good heavens, if you eat it while it is still soft and creamy it is seriously the nectar of the Gods. It is sinful in every fabulous way possible. 

A note from the mini chefs...strawberry ice cream is better if you cajole your mother into dumping the leftover 1/2 bag of chocolate chips that have been collecting dust since Christmas in the pantry.  Great use for old chocolate chips. 

A note from the big chef...if you are on a low sugar diet and have been for 4 weeks and this is your first sugar intake in that 4 weeks enter this delight slowly and with trepidation.  The sheer overload of sugary goodness might cause mild convulsions. But then again, that might have been the glass of wine too.  Regardless, be careful when you try this at home.