How to Make Homemade Ice Cream

Our family LOVES ice cream, whose doesn’t, right?  But because we love ice cream so much, I don’t tend to buy it too often, after all, it doesn’t last long and we do tend to eat more than we should.  But there are times when we have friends over that the occasion just screams for ice cream.

So here’s what I do.  I make homemade ice cream on the spot.  I always keep a quart of heavy cream in my refrigerator.  Heavy cream has a relatively long shelf-life, it lasts up to a month.  I have a simple ice cream recipe where I use that only uses heavy cream, sugar, vanilla extract, and milk or half-and-half.  I don’t usually have half-and-half on hand, but I always have skim milk, so I use skim milk.

I make this basic Vanilla Ice Cream recipe nearly every time, it is so incredibly delicious!

I found a Hamilton Beach 1.5 Qt. Ice Cream Maker at Walmart for $24.88.  Wow, the same Ice Cream Maker is double the price at Amazon right now.  The Hamilton Beach 1.5 Qt. Ice Cream Maker is currently on Rollback at Walmart.  Sweet.

With the Hamilton Beach 1.5 Qt. Ice Cream Maker no rock salt is needed.  It’s a simple plug and play operation.  The first thing you do  is freeze the ice cream bowl in your freezer overnight.  In fact, when I’m not using my freezer bowl, I just store it in the freezer so it’s ready to make ice cream when I am.  Now I can have ice cream on a whim without having to go to the store!

But the Hamilton Beach 1.5 Qt. Ice Cream Maker doesn’t make just ice cream, you can also make frozen yogurt, sherbet, custard, and gelato.  And if you think about it, the cost is minimal compared to going out and buying the family ice cream cones.  Heavy cream costs around $7 for a quart, so this is the most expensive ingredient.  But ice cream cones for the family can cost up to $20 these days and quite frankly, the ice cream you can make at home tastes even better!

I love the Vanilla Ice Cream recipe so much, I have never really tried any other flavor.  But for this article, I dabbled in a couple of other offerings.

I made my simple Vanilla Ice Cream recipe and crumbled in a blueberry muffin and frozen blueberries in the last 5 minutes of churning.

The ice cream turned out great and the muffin made nice soft chewy chunks adding texture to an already great flavor.

One big downside with the Hamilton Beach Ice Cream Maker is that it just doesn’t firm up enough after 20-30 minutes.  It makes a great soft ice cream soup, but it needs to be hardened up more.  I didn’t churn it further out of fear that it will turn into whipping cream.  So I just place it in the freezer for a half hour to an hour before serving.  It’s still great tasting ice cream.

Next, I made Chocolate Ice Cream, to appease my son.  He loves the Vanilla Ice Cream recipe, but he loves chocolate.  Here’s a chocolate recipe I used:

Here are the ingredients that go into Chocolate Homemade Ice Cream.  It’s basically the same recipe, you just add in a 1/2 cup of cocoa powder.

I was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted.  I will definitely have to add Chocolate Ice Cream recipe to my repertoire!

Let me tell you, the sky is the limit in creating awesome homemade ice creams.  Just take a look at Pinterest for an exotic assortment of possibilities from Frozen Hot Cocoa, to Soda Pop, to Cinnamon Almond Milk, to Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter to Red Wine Ice Cream!  Yum!  I can’t wait to try some of these!

I recommend that you keep your 1 1/2 quart ice cream container in the freezer so you’ll be ready at a moment’s notice to begin making ice cream.  Other creative ideas I’ve seen you can do with your frozen ice cream container is to use it for an ice bucket, wine chiller, or bowl to place Popsicles in when serving a bunch of kids at once!  I love multi-tasking devices!

Hamilton Beach 1.5 Qt. Homemade Ice Cream Maker

Features:

• 1.5 qt. capacity
• Simple operation – turn on or off
• Includes recipes
• Container is open so you can drop in your favorite mix-ins
• Freeze bowl to keep ice cream cold

Pros:

• Love the red color
• Price is affordable
• Makes gourmet ice cream for the family affordable
• Easy enough for kids to make ice cream on their own
• The ice cream flavor is fantastic, everyone will come running when they hear the ice cream maker is done

Cons:

• Ice cream is too soft.  I found I need to freeze the container with the ice cream in it for 30-minutes to an hour before serving

I bought my Hamilton Beach Ice Cream Maker at my local Walmart store but it can also be purchased online at Walmart.com for $24.88.  To avoid shipping costs, you can even have your online purchase sent to your local store for pick up.  They will notify when it’s ready to be picked up.  Also, keep in mind that Walmart always matches their online prices in the store.

A Mom’s Perspective

The next time I make brownies, I can’t wait to crumble some up into the ice cream!  I love Brownie Ice Cream, but now that I’m gluten-free, I can’t have it anymore.  Now I can make gluten-free brownies at home and add them to my ice cream maker!  Woohoo!

I have made ice cream for friends multiple times now and I have found that 1 1/2 quarts can serve up to 10 people.  I don’t give out large servings, because it’s so rich and usually, we are putting it on top of something.  I’m telling you, make fresh homemade ice cream for your guests, it will be a surefire hit!

At $24.88, you may even consider getting two Hamilton Beach 1.5 Qt. Ice Cream Makers so you can make a double batch or two different flavors at one time.  It’s a really good price.

What kind of homemade ice cream would you make?