Make Your Own Ice Cream

This is a great rainy day activity or hot, sunny day. It is fun for groups, kids or adults, parties, holidays. This was a family tradition for us to make homemade ice cream on 4th of July.

Just remember that this idea does require some special equipment and foresight. Make sure you have a good recipe... and all the ingredients.

Also if this is the first time you are using your machine be sure to read ALL the directions.
Like our new machine explains you have to freeze the container for at least 8 hours. Of course we were intending to eat the ice cream sometime today... so... We decided to give it a try after freezing it a significantly shorter amount of time.

We decided on a recipe from ice-cream-recipes.com.

Strawberry Ice Cream

3 egg yolks (beaten)
1/2 pint milk
1/2 pint heavy cream
4 oz sugar
2 cups of strawberries
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Take the strawberries and mash them in with half the sugar in a bowl. Place in the refrigerator while making the rest of the recipe.
In a separate saucepan, mix the egg yolks with the milk, salt and the remaining sugar. Place over a medium heat just to boiling point (stirring all the time). DO NOT LET IT BOIL.
Transfer the mixture into a chilled bowl to cool. When cool place in the refrigerator for up to 3 hours, remembering to stir the mixture from time to time. When cool, stir into the mixture the cream and vanilla essence and then blend in the strawberry/sugar mixture.
Transfer the complete mixture into an ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions.

But instead of the strawberries we added homemade cookie dough. Yum Yum.

We did have to eat half of it before we added it to the ice cream. And we even have leftover cookie dough frozen and ready for baking at a later time.

Paul found a egg-less cookie dough recipe, which I like to call the...

Edible Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

2 cups of all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup melted butter
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
4 Tablespoons of milk
1 bag of semisweet chocolate chips (we used mini chips)

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Add a splash water if the dough doesn't come together.
Roll into a several logs and wrap in plastic wrap. Place in the freezer for at least one hour. Chunk up and add to ice cream during freezing process.

You can put just about anything you want in your ice cream. Some additives might require a special recipe. We also added half of a vanilla bean for the classic specks and flavor. (And well because I had some, so why not?)

It will be softer then your typical 'grocery store' ice cream. If you were to leave it in your freezer for several days then it would possibly get that hard. Most likely it won't last that long.

Good luck and enjoy!