Home-Made Ice Cream

I'm not a huge fan of ice cream, but every once in a while the urge strikes, and I have to have some. With The Young One's birthday this week, and the wicked hot weather we've been having, I thought it would be fun to make some ice cream. Only problem no ice cream maker. I went on a hunt through Allrecipes.com to see if there was an easy ice cream recipe that didn't require an ice cream maker. And guess what? I found a couple and decided to give the Five Ingredient Ice Cream recipe a try.

The recipe is a basic vanilla ice cream. Uses heavy cream and sweetened condensed milk as a thickener. The heavy cream is whipped to stiff peaks. One thing I didn't do before I began whipping the cream was to chill the bowl and whisk. I have a stand mixer and the mixer can output some heat which can cause unhappy things to happen like turning whipped cream to butter. I was lucky and didn't run into any problems.  This time. Note to self: next batch chill the bowl and whisk.

The nice thing about a plain vanilla ice cream is you can add whatever you like to it. I added some frozen sliced strawberries and chocolate chips. The ice cream had a wonderful smooth texture. Very creamy and not grainy. Looks like most of the goodies settled to the bottom, but that might have been due to not enough stirring after 2 hours in the freezer. The recipe made 1/2 gallon, and I froze it in a deep rectangular Gladware 1/2 gallon tub.

The Young One commented, "Homemade Vanilla Icecream with Strawberries and Chocolate Chips is heaven in a cup!" I.M.G.S. I make good stuff.

Do you like ice cream? What's your favorite flavor? (Image of ice cream from Stock.Xchng)