Home Made Ice Cream

Home made ice cream is one of my favorite memories from our family picnics. Back then they only had the type of ice cream maker that had to be hand cranked and everybody took their turn cranking. The younger you were the earlier your turn was. It definitely got harder as the ice cream started to set.

Now if you want a hand cranked ice cream maker you will pay a premium for it. However, the new electric models save a lot of aggravation. The concept is the same whether it is an electric or hand cranked ice cream maker. You have an ice bath (chipped ice with rock salt to create a temperature below freezing) surrounding an inner container with scrapers inside. As the mixture freezes the scrapers remove it from the sides of the container allowing more of the liquid to get to the outside and freeze. (My favorite part was always licking the paddles and we used to have many an argument over whose turn it was for that.)

Then you could either freeze the contents or in our case it never lasted long enough for any leftovers and was eaten immediately.

The variety of types of home made ice cream is probably limited only by your imagination. One of my favorite recipe books for making home made ice cream is 131 Ice Cream Maker Recipes.