I Scream, Ice Cream (the saga)

This past weekend I was determined to make ice cream.  About 5-6 years ago I talked my mom into buying  an ice cream maker and she gave it to me when I moved out a year later. 3 apartments later, I've finally decided to use it and make homemade ice cream. It turns out it doesn't work! Maybe I lost a part in one of our moves, I know I definitely lost the instruction booklet. Of course, I figured this out after I found a recipe for gelato. It didn't deter me because I thought I could just make ice cream without an ice cream maker.  Basically, you make your creamy concoction and freeze it, but constantly check on it and scrape the frozen parts because you want ice cream to be creamy not icy. I do not recommend this method.


A second method is to put your ice cream into a zip lock bag, seal it shut, then get a big trash bag, fill it with ice and rock salt, toss your zip lock bag of cream into the bag and 'shake it for 5 or so minutes.' I also do not recommend this method. It took longer than 5 minutes to get anything going.

Instead, I tried method A of freezing and scraping until the mixture was kind of like pudding, then I tried method B with the shaking in bags. The result is basically I gave up when it got thick enough to be considered ice cream. It was more like a shake substance, which was fine by me because I was sick of shaking a bag full of ice!

Did I mention I tried this twice, because I wanted to make two distinct ice cream flavors? Well I did. And they were pretty darn good and if I had a legitimate ice cream maker, they would have been great.

I made strawberry gelato and coffee-chocolate chip-gelato. The coffee-chocolate chip gelato was the best, and I think I hit a real winner.

Recipe (Base recipe and method adapted from David Lebovitz's website)

Base

2 cups whole milk
1/3 cup sugar

2 eggs yolks

Additional Flavorings

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp finely ground coffee grinds

1/2 a square of fancy baking chocolate (bittersweet), chopped into fine chips

1. Heat milk in a medium-sized saucepan with the sugar and whisk in the egg yolks

3. Heat until the mixture comes to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and simmer for 3 minutes

4. Remove from heat, scrape into a bowl, and chill

5. Add your additional flavorings

6. Ideally use an ice cream maker to churn your ice cream

7. Enjoy! Yum!