Friday, June 12, 2009

Time For Homemade Ice Cream

Summer is almost here and with it comes hot sweltering days. It's the perfect time to make some old fashioned home made ice cream. Nowadays it's a lot simpler than in our great grandparents day when you had to crank it yourself. You can create the perfect bowl of goodness with some high tech machines and primo ingredients.

The first item you'll need is a good ice cream maker. Several companies have some long lasting easy to use models that will last for years. What's the best one to buy? You can spend almost a grand on the Musso Lussino, an Italian import. it is ultra heavy weighing in at forty pounds but it makes dense creamy ice cream. For those of you on a budget there's Rival White Mountain six quart ice cream maker.It's two hundred bucks and looks like an old fashioned ice cream maker. it is noisy however and does need a lot of ice. There are also much cheaper ones but Salton and Donlier that you can pick up at your local Target or K-Mart.

Once you have your ice cream maker, you can begin the fun process. Beginners should stick with the basic vanilla recipe. The best one is made custard style where you cook the egg yolks and cream in a sauce pan. You use real vanilla bean, (not the flavoring) along with caster sugar. if you want you can add fresh sliced strawberries or grated dark chocolate ( I would use broken pieces here for a nice chunky, crunchy effect). If you want homemade chocolate then use squares of milk chocolate and drop into the custard mixture while it's cooking. There are several on line sites that offer excellent ice cream recipes. You can also be creative and invent your own.

Treat yourself and your family to old fashioned home made ice cream. It;s 's worth all the work. The taste is amazing !You'll never want the store bought kind again.

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