Who makes it? Who wants to talk about it? Most imporantly, who has recipes to share?
I gave Mr. Horseshoe a KitchenAid mixer attachment for Christmas - he’s been wanting an ice cream maker for years and has been having fun playing with it. Yesterday he made a caramel-sea salt-espresso concotion in honor of his mother’s birthday and it is Teh YUMMM.
What should he make next? What do you like making? Tips? Tricks?
ICE CREAM!!!
We bought one of the Cuisinart makers (in hideous Chinese orange), with some trepidation on my part. I have to say that it does a good job, but the flimsy paddle makes me nervous. We’ve made the caramel-sea salt, which is very good. The Ms, never one to follow a recipe too closely, decided to use nothing but heavy cream instead of cutting it with milk, and the result was close to butter in consistency and mouth feel. That’s not necessarily a good thing. We also made some sort of chocolate concoction that I wasn’t crazy about, since it had a gritty consistency. Practice is called for.
Nothing beats home-made peach ice cream on a hot summer day. Brings back memories of childhood.
I like this a lot.
Where do we fall on egg vs. eggless recipes?
I’ve posted a mocha ice cream recipe and a piña colada frozen yogurt recipe over here. Add some crushed mini Heath bars to the mocha and you get a reasonable approximation of Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Toffee Crunch.
Use cocoa powder instead of coffee powder and up the sugar a bit: chocolate! Toss in some frozen, pitted cherries (or maraschinos) for “chocolate covered cherry”.
We have the KitchenAid freezer also. But we’re pretty dull in that respect, we’ve only made vanilla ice cream so far. I guess we’re not huge ice cream fans for some reason. But I’ve been thinking about trying exotic flavors like salmon and chile peppers.
We make a lot of ice cream in the summer. I have a recipe for a mocha ice cream with toasted almonds that is our particular favorite. I usually try for a leaner mix with more milk and less cream. We did a custard (egg) ice cream once and didn’t care for the texture, so now we stick with the eggless types.
I always toss in a tablespoon of some sort of alcohol (Kahlua or Baileys, vodka for lighter flavors) to keep the ice cream from freezing too hard. We’ve also learned to pack it into serving-sized containers before putting it into the freezer to harden.
It’s been such a warm winter, I think we’ll stock up tomorrow and make a batch of butter pecan.
A friend of mine is working on a book of recipes for spirited ice creams. Her Dark And Stormy ice cream is pretty good (and I don’t even like rum).
Good vanilla ice cream is the food of the gods.
I has churn! With cranky handle for manual spinning! Makes 4 quarts. Seems like a lot but no more than 2.5 quarts survive the introductory night.
Southern style ice milk actually. It fireezes a bit soft then when stuck in the chest freezer for preservation gets quite icy-hard.
I’ve made nice coconut ice cream and cherry chocolate vanilla that my girlfriends will attest tol
We’re hoping to perfect a cranberry sorbet recipe this summer.
I always pop in to give the tip I found out when making ice cream at home: substitute some form of liquid sweetener for about a quarter of the granulated sugar. I used Karo’s light corn syrup, but real maple syrup is also good. It works brilliantly to keep your final product from getting that gritty, ice crystal-y consistency. I read it once on an ice cream-making tips page.
If you want fruit, like strawberries, in your ice cream, cook it first with some sugar until a lot of the water is cooked off and it starts to get a bit like jam. Otherwise it’ll freeze in hard icy rocks.
We got a Cuisinart Pure Indulgence 2-quart ice cream maker in December and have made: French Vanilla (with eggs), Vanilla flavored with Baileys, Vanilla flavored with Kahlua, Vanilla flavored with Creme de Menthe, Orange Creamsicle, Peanut Butter and Brown Sugar, Key Lime, and the best Chocolate (using imported cocoa powder and espresso powder) ever - we made two batches of that so far, like a frozen liquid brownie! The French Vanilla didn’t go over too well, it came out overly ‘eggy’, needs some practice I guess. The liqueur flavored versions - they were OK, they didn’t freeze very hard, of course. The Orange Creamsicle, we used juice and zest from an orange in addition to some tangy orange soda mixed with the cream, and it was a big hit, though it did have some ice crystals from the water. The Peanut Butter and Brown Sugar is like frozen peanut butter fudge, also a big hit. Oddly, no one has gone near the Key Lime (and I spent half an hour juicing those tiny limes on my little antique juicer, too!). The Chocolate was to die for, it disappears as fast as we make it. (I also tried making some ice milk with fresh goats milk and honey, and it was tasty, but really really rock hard!) We just used the basic recipe in the booklet and have been improvising a bit. I have a great big recipe book of all kinds of exotic ice creams. We have to finish up what we have in the freezer first. Wouldn’t mind some Watermelon Sorbet this summer! It’s been a lot of fun, the only down sides are waiting for the freezer bowl to freeze and of course gaining weight from slurping down gallons of flavored cream and sugar! I bought tiny glass bowls at the Dollar Tree, just the right size for one or two small scoops.