I’ve been making ice cream at home using recipes from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home.[1]
We made homemade ice cream growing up. Churning it by hand for special summer occasions. And it wasn’t bad. It was different than store-bought ice cream and tasty in its own way. Our neighbor Martha Egolf made a homemade pineapple ice cream that I remember 40 years later as wonderful. Although they were also dairy farmers so maybe fresh raw milk made a difference too.
If you follow the recipes[2] in Jeni’s book though your homemade product comes out with the taste and texture of premium-brand ice creams like Ben & Jerry’s. It’s remarkable. She has you use ingredients like corn starch and cream cheese to achieve that rich, creamy smoothness without any icy crystals.
Here’s a batch of roasted pistachio nut ice cream cooked up and ready to freeze.
One thing I like about her recipes are they’re all to make a quart. 1 quart is plenty for us before it sits in the freezer too long and gets icy.
Jeni calls for using an electric automatic ice maker to churn the ice cream. I use this little hand cranked ice cream maker that Debbie got me.
I love this little freezer. Cranking it by hand makes me feel I’m earning my ice cream. Although it only takes 10 to 15 minutes to churn the ice cream in it, so I doubt I’m burning more calories than I’ll eat. It doesn’t make any noise and if it breaks I can fix it. It’s just a satisfying device on many levels. Do you like the snazzy paint job I gave it?
Owen was helping me churn the ice cream, but was soon overcome by weariness and had to take a nap.
[1] My son Josh once interviewed Jeni for Bloomberg News. How’s that for interesting in a 6 degrees of separation sort of way?
[2] I’m not including any recipes from her book here. It’s a copyrighted work and she did such a splendid[3] job on it I don’t want to steal her work. I’m sure your library has or will get you a copy if you don’t want to buy it before trying it.
[3] Hahaha! ‘Splendid’ Get it? ‘Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams?’ … Never mind.
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