Home-made Ice Cream

So my special house guest who I mentioned in this post happened to have a hand-crank ice cream machine with him. He's driving cross-country and had a bunch of stuff with him. It's not like he just drives around with this contraption in his car. But anyway, we had to try making ice cream. So what went into this?

1/2 gallon 2% milk
2 cans of sweet and condensed milk
2 Tb. vanilla extract
1/2 pint of heavy cream

Add all ingredients together in metal canister. Add ice, rock salt and a little bit of water all around the metal canister and start crankin'. And about 30 minutes later, voila you have ice cream!

I was pretty surprised at the flavor of this ice cream. It tastes like French Vanilla or Vanilla Bean ice cream. The texture was a little grittier, but overall the ice cream was really good. And it made a ton. We have a lot left over for a while.

It took a little patience and a lot of muscle at the end to crank that ice cream, but it was fun to make it yourself. At least you know what's in your ice cream now. It tempted me to want to make my own ice cream from now on. Of course I'd buy an electric ice cream machine since I have no patience, or muscle, to hand-crank the ice cream for 30 minutes.

But it's definitely something fun to do with friends and/or family on a summer day!