Beat the Heat with a Chilly Treat: Delicious Homemade Ice Cream

It’s hot this week. Fry an egg on the sidewalk, hunker down in the basement, eat cold food so you don’t have to turn on the oven hot. Really. It’s hot enough today that I think we’ll have a frozen lunch. My kids are voting for ice cream and right now a delicious homemade ice cream sounds like just the ticket.

Ice cream is a staple food at our house but despite the fact that we have a nifty electric ice cream maker (one of the big ones) that will whip up a batch in less than thirty minutes, we always seem to end up with the party pail from the grocery store.

My hubby is somewhat of an ice cream purist–he thinks the best way to flavor ice cream is with toppings. Me, I like the kind that has all kinds of yummy things already mixed in. Our kids are pretty evenly split. Or maybe not. Some of them think the best way to eat ice cream is to take the kind with yummy things mixed in and pour toppings all over it. Definitely sounds like they take after both parents. So, we may have to make two batches of ice cream. One basic vanilla and then another with yummy things in it, maybe frozen berries or chocolate chips and nuts, or even all of the above.

When I was a kid, I remember making ice cream with the old hand-crank freezer. My mom would make the base–and it seemed like it took about a zillion eggs (which is why we don’t make that kind any more) and my dad would man the ice cream maker. We all had to take our turn sitting on top of the bucket (when we were really little) or turning the handle. Once it got too hard for us, Dad took over and finished the job. Today we get to plug the ice cream maker in and we use an ice cream recipe that doesn’t use raw eggs in it. This recipe is every bit as rich and decadent as mom’s egg-custard ice cream, but a lot simpler and much less time consuming to prepare. It is also a very smooth and creamy ice cream.

Delicious Homemade Ice Cream

Ingredients

2 cups heavy whipping cream
2 cups half-and-half
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions

Combine all ingredients and mix well, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Freeze in an ice cream freezer, according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Makes about 1-1/2 quarts of ice cream.

To add mix-ins:

For fruit, substitute 2 cups of fresh or frozen pureed fruit for one cup of the half-and-half. Stir in before freezing.

For nuts, chocolate chips, etc., add 1 to 1-1/2 cups according to your taste (we like the mini chocolate chips better than full-size chips) toward the end of the freezing cycle for just enough time to distribute them throughout the mix.

Need some really delicious ice cream cones to finish off your treat? Check out my favorite ice cream cone recipe here.

And if you’re looking for a fun and easy way to pass the time and keep your kids busy on a hot afternoon without pulling out the ice cream freezer–check out this fun and easy ice-cream-in-a-baggie recipe. No special ingredients needed and it’s ready in just five minutes. Really!