Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The CommonSenseMom's Homemade Ice Cream

I've been making homemade ice cream for the past several months. In this post, I've put together what I've learned. You can see my current best recipe, some flavor variations, my upcoming recipe tweaks, etc.


The CommonSenseMom's Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

¼ c. cold water
2 T. unflavored gelatin
3 c. whole milk
1 c. sugar
¼ t. salt
1 t. vanilla
1 c. heavy whipping cream

Put cold water in small shallow bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water and let sit. Put the milk in a glass mixing bowl. Microwave until it reaches 160 degrees. In my microwave, it takes 7 minutes. Add the softened gelatin, sugar, and salt to the hot milk and whisk for 2 full minutes. Add vanilla and cream to milk mixture. Whisk until thoroughly combined.

Chill mixture in refrigerator until cold. Put mix into ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Makes about 13 half cup servings. Each serving has approximately 158 calories, 72 calories from fat, 8 g. total fat, 5.4 g. saturated fat, 33 g. cholesterol, 20 g. carbohydrate, and 20 g. sugars. This is relatively close to the nutritional data for Edy's Grand Vanilla Ice Cream.


Variations

Chocolate: Add 2/3 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips to milk before heating. Slightly increase heating time.

Chocolate/Fudge Swirl: When putting the ice cream into its storage container, alternate layers of ice cream and fudge topping.

Chocolate Chip: Add 2/3 c. miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips during the last minute of churning. After removing the dasher, mix with your spoon a little to make sure the chips are evenly distributed.

Cookies & Cream: Crush about 20 Oreos. Add during the last minute of churning. After removing the dasher, mix with your spoon a little to make sure the cookies are evenly distributed.

Mint Chocolate Chip: Replace vanilla extract with ½ t. vanilla extract, ½ t. peppermint extract, and 3 drops green food coloring. Add 2/3 c. miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips during the last minute of churning. After removing the dasher, mix with your spoon a little to make sure the chips are evenly distributed. Note that you want peppermint extract, not mint extract.

Chocolate Marshmallow: Use the chocolate variation above. When putting the ice cream into its storage container, alternate layers of chocolate ice cream and marshmallow topping.

Strawberry: Thaw 8 ounces of frozen, sweetened strawberries. (They come in a 16-ounce tub in the freezer section of WalMart). Mash the strawberries with their juice. Add to the ice cream during the last 2 minutes of churning. After removing the dasher, mix with your spoon a little to make sure the strawberries are evenly distributed.

Cinnamon: Add 1 t. cinnamon along with the vanilla. Serve over apple pie.

Custard: Beat 2 eggs well. Add the eggs to the milk prior to heating. Whisk together thoroughly. You may have to slightly increase the heating time. Increase sugar by 2 T.


Upcoming tests

I will try replacing ¼ c. of the sugar with ¼ c. honey. I want to see if that will keep it from freezing so hard.

I am going to experiment with adding non-fat dry milk powder to increase the creaminess.


Some of my related posts

Homemade Ice Cream is Too Hard
Making Ice Cream: Some Useful Tools
Product Review: KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment
A Good Basic Ice Cream Recipe to Start With

Making Ice Cream: Some Useful Tools

After reviewing my KitchenAid KICA0WH Ice Cream Maker AttachmentI decided to let you know of some useful tools I have discovered in my past several months of regular ice cream making.

You'll need a container in which to store your completed product. I found some 8-cup plastic containers at WalMart that do the trick. The great part is that they are rectangular shaped rather than round, so they fit nicely in the freezer. Eight-Cup GladWare Deep Dish Containers with Lidswould work, too.

A bowl to combine your ingredients will be necessary. I have a Pampered Chef Batter Bowl that works just perfectly for this job. It is made of glass, so it can go into the microwave to heat the milk. It has a lid for covering the ice cream mix while it is cooling in the fridge. And, best of all, it has a spout which makes for easier pouring into the ice cream maker. Being dishwasher safe makes it perfect.

The last little gem I will mention is unflavored gelatin. It's not exactly a tool, I guess. But this is a great ingredient to add smoothness to your ice cream. The gelatin binds with water to help reduce the amount of ice crystals in your frozen ice cream. After I decided that the little packets at the grocery store were too expensive, I went on a quest to find bulk unflavored gelatin for a reasonable price. The best I have found is at Amazon.com. They carry two varieties: Kosher gelatin (made from beef) and regular gelatin (made from pork). You can click on one of the boxes below to order!



Here are some of my related posts:

Homemade Ice Cream is Too Hard
A Good, Basic Ice Cream Recipe to Start With
Product Review: KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The CommonSenseMom's Homemade Ice Cream

Product Review: KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment - KICA0WH

As long promised to you, I offer my review of the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment.

While vacationing in Seattle last summer, I was a guest at a dinner party where the hostess served homemade cinnamon ice cream on top of apple pie. Wow, what a knockout combination! When I found out that she had some new-fangled Cuisinart ice cream maker that didn't require salt or ice, I had to know more about it.

During my research, I found that KitchenAid has an ice cream maker attachment for their stand mixers that works on the same principle. The key to this new generation of ice cream makers is the insulated bowl. You put the bowl in the deep freeze overnight or longer. This cold, insulated container takes the place of the salt and ice in the ice cream freezing process. I already own a KitchenAid stand mixer, and I wished to avoid taking up more counter and cabinet space with gadgets, if possible. So, I eventually decided on the KitchenAid attachment instead of the Cuisinart ice cream maker.

I've continually heard good things about the Cuisinart, and I include a link here for your convenience. But, I cannot offer anything but hearsay on the Cuisinart.

Since Christmas, I have been the owner of the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment. I told my husband and kids that I would have to practice quite a bit to get the recipe just right. They were going to have to be good soldiers and eat all of the practice batches. They didn't disappoint me.

I started out with Rebecca's cinnamon ice cream recipe without the cinnamon. It had been so good in Seattle that I was pretty sure I couldn't go wrong. The first batch was a hit!

It was so rich and creamy. I just knew that we couldn't consume something like that too frequently. So, I began to tweak my recipe. To be honest, I am still tweaking, but we haven't had a bad batch yet. I'll be posting some of my recipes and hints here in the future.

It is important to understand that homemade ice cream is different than store bought ice cream. At the end of churning, it will be the consistency of soft-serve ice cream or maybe an extremely thick milkshake. You can eat it soft right away, or you put it in the freezer to "ripen" and harden. After being fully frozen, it is very hard. See my tip about softening prior to serving.

The bottom line is that I have been very, very pleased with the performance of the KitchenAid attachment. My current recipe makes almost a half gallon of ice cream, and that is just about all the bowl can reasonably hold. I wish it were bigger, so I could make a full gallon at a time (we have a big family). All of the pieces, except for the bowl itself, are dishwasher safe. The bowl washes up easily in warm soapy water. Usually I have to wipe some ice cream off the post of the mixer also. But, overall, cleanup is pretty simple.

Highly recommended!

Here are some of my related posts:

Homemade Ice Cream is Too Hard
Making Ice Cream: Some Useful Tools
A Good, Basic Ice Cream Recipe to Start With
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The CommonSenseMom's Homemade Ice Cream

More About Cornbread

Maybe you've tried my cornbread recipe. If so, you've probably noticed that fresh cornbread is wonderful, but it gets dried out much more quickly than normal bread. Here's our solution: freeze immediately!

As soon as the cornbread is cool, or maybe even still slightly warm, remove meal sized portions from the pan. Place in plastic bags and freeze.

Just take them out of the freezer again when you need them. Give them about an hour to thaw on the counter. If still slightly cold, put in the microwave for a few seconds to warm. Almost as good as fresh-baked.

Homemade Ice Cream is Too Hard

I got an ice cream maker for Christmas. Eventually, I'll post a review and my perfected (!) recipe.

But, for now, I'll simply comment on the hardness of homemade ice cream. It is unfortunate that we get so used to the goo they put in commercial ice cream. But, alas, we do like goo, don't we? Anyway, I've fiddled around with my recipe quite a bit, and the ice cream is still hard as a brick after ripening in the freezer.

So, you can let it sit on the counter for 15 minutes before eating. But, my personal favorite method is to take it out of the freezer and put it into the fridge for 2 hours prior to serving. Yes, it takes some advance planning, but the consistency is just right!

Here are some of my related posts:

A Good, Basic Ice Cream Recipe to Start With
Making Ice Cream: Some Useful Tools
Product Review: KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The CommonSenseMom's Homemade Ice Cream

The CommonSenseMom's Bread Pudding Recipe

The CommonSenseMom's Bread Pudding Recipe

12 cups 1-inch bread cubes
6 cups milk
3/4 c. melted butter
1 1/2 c. sugar (maybe a little extra)
6 eggs, beaten
1 T. vanilla
1 t. nutmeg
1 t. cinnamon

Thoroughly whisk together all ingredients except the bread cubes in a glass bowl and heat in the microwave for about 5 minutes. Put bread cubes in a large bowl. Pour the heated liquid over the bread cubes and gently combine until liquid is well distributed. Let stand 10 minutes. Transfer to greased baking dish (mine was 11 X 14 X 2 1/2). Lightly cover with foil and bake on top rack of oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 15-20 minutes until knife inserted in center comes out clean. After bread pudding has cooled to "warm", drizzle with a thin powdered sugar icing (I didn't measure at all...just powdered sugar, milk, vanilla).

I keep the heels and stale bread in a bag in the freezer until I am ready to use them. Then I thaw and cut them into cubes. My bread is homemade and mostly made with white whole wheat flour. More fat in your milk will give you a richer bread pudding.

Instead of topping with powdered sugar icing, you can serve with warm maple syrup (the real thing) or a vanilla sauce. We preferred the powdered sugar icing to the vanilla sauce.

If I were going to use a 9 X 13 pan, I would make 2/3 of this recipe and adjust the baking time.

Calories, Fat grams, Carbs in Dairy Products

I got an ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid as a Christmas gift. So, I've been experimenting to get the perfect recipe. I cobbled this chart together to help myself, and thought I'd share it with all of you. It looks pretty ugly right here, so click on the chart to see it.

Easy Buttermilk Substitute

Add a little lemon juice to regular milk then let it sit and curdle.

About once a month, I bake homemade banana muffins. My favorite banana bread/muffin recipe calls for buttermilk, but it is a pain to try to keep buttermilk on hand for such an occasional use. Since I need 1/3 c. buttermilk, I first put a teaspoon or so of lemon juice into my measuring cup then add enough milk to make 1/3 cup. After it sits for about five minutes, it is all curdled up and works like a charm.

By the way, banana muffins are way better than banana bread because they get cooked all the way through without browning too much on the outside. As for how overripe the bananas should be: the browner (or blacker), the better.

The Secret to Perfect Rice Krispie Treats

Two words: fresh marshmallows