Yum. Homemade Ice cream

I've always had a sweet spot for ice cream.  Lately we've been making our own at home.  It's really pretty easy once you have an ice cream maker. We bought ours at the end of last summer when they are heavily discounted.  I think we only paid $15 for a 4 qt maker.   When you factor in the cost of cream, making ice cream at home probably isn't any cheaper than just buying it at the store.  But I prefer the taste of homemade, and feel slightly better knowing exactly what is in the ice cream without those unnesissary additives.

Over spring break we made Mint and Chip Ice Cream using this recipe from Allrecipes.com http://allrecipes.com/recipe/easy-mint-chocolate-chip-ice-cream/

Original recipe makes 2 quarts                   

Makes servings USMetricAdjust Recipe (Help)

•  2 cups 2% milk                                                                     
•  2 cups heavy cream                                                                     
• 1 cup sugar                                                                     
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract                                                                     
• 1 teaspoon peppermint extract                                                                     
• 3 drops green food coloring (optional)                                         
• 1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

 

The recipe is really simple, just put all the ingredients together, and process according to your machine's instructions. You should delay adding the chips.  We waited until about 15 minutes in to processing, but you could wait until the end too, probably.  It was so simple I had my two year old lend a hand.  He was super excited.  He liked the green food coloring part the best--well he liked the green food coloring second only to sampling our creation.

 

When we bought cream for the mint ice cream, I forgot what I needed and we ended up with too much.  Not a problem.  We just made an extra batch of ice cream.  This time, we tried Strawberry.

We used Emeril's recipe  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/fresh-strawberry-ice-cream-recipe/index.html

• 1 quart fresh strawberries, washed, stemmed and quartered
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 4 cups half-and-half
• 1/2 vanilla bean, split in half and scraped (we just used vanilla extract)
• 6 egg yolks (because I don't read carefully, we used the entire egg... not noticeably bad outcome)

Directions

 Food process the strawberries and 1/2 cup of the sugar. Process until smooth. In a saucepan, over medium heat, combine the half-and-half and sugar. Bring to a simmer. In a small mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks until smooth.  Temper eggs. Add the yolk mixture to the liquid and whisk. Bring the liquid back to simmer and continue to cook for 4 to 6 minutes or until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat and stir in the strawberries. Whisk until smooth. Pour the mixture into a glass bowl and place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the mixture.  Cool the mixture completely. Process the mixture according your machines instructions

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Because of the cooking required for the eggs, this wasn't nearly as two year old friendly as the first recipe.  Cooking with the eggs results in a very cus