Summer’s Best Treat
What dessert will please everyone, make unforgettable memories AND is made the day before a party? The answer is ice cream. Now before you stop reading while muttering and cursing about ice, salt and mess, reconsider, and please read on.
Ice cream is not rocket science, it is simply milk, sugar and eggs, a custard base, which is where the name frozen custard came in to our vocabulary. Almost anything freezes into a tasty treat. The Italians use fresh ripened fruit, sugar and water and make the most delectable gelato. Milk, cream, a combination or substitute will freeze into a creamy, luscious texture just made to make you want more. Adding eggs to the mixture requires cooking, but yields that “mouth feel” only found in the richest custards. The base is made the night before (or two days before) it is needed. The overnight cooling and ripening time allows the mixture to meld and develop flavor. It also makes the whole process easier on you.
Oh, but you have to have equipment, you say. Ice cream makers range in price from 24.99 and up. If you ask around, someone has two of them on a shelf in the basement that hasn’t been used in years. They will be happy to give it to you. Otherwise, my advice is to do the “green thing” and buy one at a garage sale. The key point in understanding ice cream making technology is that it hasn’t changed in any significant way since it was invented, by a woman, in the mid eighteen hundreds. So any ice cream maker will do the job and do the job well.
The mess, the ice and you have to have salt , you moan. What else do you have to do at a family picnic? Consider the set up and monitoring of the churn your time out from Aunt Gertrude and become the Picnic Hero with the rest of the relatives. We use the left over rock salt from the driveway bag, and pick up the ice along the way or try and keep an extra bag in the freezer. All you do is pour the base into the central tube shaped bowl of the ice cream maker, place the dasher (a big spatula mixer thingy) in the bowl and close tightly with the provided lid. The dasher top will stick out. Pour /shove the ice around the tube/bowl in the larger bucket and throw in some salt about 1/3 of the way up. Repeat until the ice is at the top of the larger bucket. Now plug it in and YES in just about 20 minutes you have ice cream. For young children this may seem like 2 hours, but 20-30 minutes usually does it. If you can fend off the hoards, allow the ice cream to stand and solidify a little more – about another 30 minutes before serving.
Vanilla is still the all out American favorite. Here I give you my favorite – Peanut Butter Ice Cream – and bring on the hot fudge!