Homemade Ice Cream...Even in Winter

The time has come for me to finally finish off this blog post and move it out of my drafts folder.  Don't know why I always seem to get stalled at this same point in the blogging process.  Oh wait!  I suppose I have 4 reasons to get distracted from completing my blog posts in a timely manner--the husband and three kiddos in my life--all good reasons, of course. :)

Ok on to a highly important topic...ice cream.  But not just any kind, the homemade kind.  As it is in most cases, homemade is just better.  If you agree with me and you have one of these....

a Kitchen Aid mixer--any style will do.

Then you really ought to consider getting one of these...

an ice cream maker attachment.

Quite possibly the best attachment Kitchen Aid sells for their mixer.

Last year for Christmas I received this from my parents and it's been purring along ever since.  Ironically my sister and I each got one of these attachments from my parents and my siblings and I gave it to my mom--for the same Christmas!  This Christmas, Shawn's brother and sister-in-law, joined us in giving this to his parents.  We're doing our best to share the "ice cream making" love. 

A couple of things that I like about the Kitchen Aid ice cream maker attachment: it doesn't require ice or rock salt, it's not any louder than your normal mixer sound, and it makes a modest 2 quarts at at time.  I really like the quantity it makes because I don't worry about trying out a new recipe and possibly ruining a quart of heavy cream in the process.

I've lost track of how many batches of ice cream I've made over the past year, but I'm sure it's more than 30.  Mostly I've stuck with our favorites: coffee, chocolate chip cookie dough, peanut butter, strawberry, mint chocolate chip, chocolate, and vanilla.  But I've also tried a few recipes that aren't your typical homemade ice cream flavor; pumpkin, pistachio, and chocolate hazelnut to name a few.

There's a few things I've learned abut making ice cream so I thought I'd share my short list here.

1.  Watch the custard carefully.

Using recipes with cooked egg yolks (or custard) can take a little practice but they are so worth it in my opinion.  Anytime your recipe involves stove top heat, you have to keep a watchful eye on your pot and your thermometer because things can wrong very fast.  I've ruined a couple batches of coffee ice cream because there's this one pesky step of rewarming the steeped milk that always seems to take forever.  If I even turn my back to wash up a few dishes I seem to turn back to curdled milk.

2.  Just use faux vanilla.

Pure vanilla has a high alcohol content and alcohol can inhibit freezing.  Even though some recipes call for a teaspoon of vodka I never risk it.  I learned this little chemistry tidbit the hard way one of the first times I made homemade ice cream in our giant 6 quart maker and couldn't figure out why it just wasn't getting setting up right.  Now I use imitation vanilla extract for all my ice cream.  And see I wrote faux instead of fake.  It already sounds better with a little positive verbage.

3.  You can skip the whole milk.

or at least some of it.  I generally use the amount of cream called for in a recipe, but whatever milk I have on hand.  Anything from skim to whole.  My last couple of batches I've used 1% since it was half at the store.  Generally I don't think there's a big difference in texture when you do this as long as you stick with the cream amount called for.

4. When it comes to chocolate, go all out.

Really this is just good advice whether there's ice cream involved or not.  I've made mint chocolate chip ice cream A LOT and I've tried it with lots of types of chocolate for the chips/chunks.  While size and texture matter in this recipe, I also think the actual taste and purity of the chocolate matters just as much.  Nestle chips taste just fine, but the size of the chips isn't right for me. And a chunked up Hershey's chocolate bar doesn't give the right level of flavor.  The best version of this recipe that I've ever made had chunks from a bar of See's milk chocolate.  It's hard to go wrong when you use good chocolate.  You'll thank me later. :)

5.  Homemade ice cream is great for sharing.

Very few of the ice cream batches I've made have been solely devoured by the residents of this household--not that we haven't tried! We love sharing our frozen treats and generally people enjoy eating them.  I almost always have something frozen and ready for whatever last minute get together my sister-in-law or I throw together.  It's always perfect for a party.  And this year we even decided it was perfect for a Christmas goodie.  Several weeks before Christmas I started making 5 different flavors of ice cream and packed them into wide mouth pint jars.  I attached a ribbon and a stamped lid topper/tag with the flavor written on and we had our festive Christmas treat ready for deliveries. 

We've gotten lots of positive feedback from our recipients and plan to do this again next year. 

The more I think about it, the less I see ice cream as only a summer dessert.  It is great in the summer, but it's also nice anytime of the year.  So even though it's January and since I've teased you all through this post about ice cream flavors, I thought I'd wrap it up by sharing one of my tried and true recipes.  It's even an easy one!

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

     adapted from Allrecipes

     makes approximately 2 quarts 

2 cups of milk (2% or 1%)

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of faux vanilla extract

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

3 drops of green food coloring (optional, but why not?)

1 cup chopped chocolate (skip the Hershey's and go for the good stuff)

In a large bowl, stir together the milk, cream, sugar, salt, vanilla, and peppermint until the sugar is dissolved.  Add the green food coloring if using.  Refrigerate mixture or immediately freeze in ice cream maker.

Pour into ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.  About half way through the freezing add the chunked chocolate.  When done churning, spoon the mixture into a container and freeze for at least 2 hours.

Enjoy!