paragiraffe

For Christmas Santa brought me the ice cream attachment for my mixer. I’ve wanted an ice cream maker for a long time, although I didn’t really want another appliance. This seemed like a good compromise.

I made ice cream for the first time for our New Year’s night in. I chose cookies & cream for my first flavor for something a little more interesting than plain vanilla (but not too adventurous). When making ice cream, you can use any percentage of milkfat (or mix of percentages). The more milkfat you have the more delicious the results will be, but if you make it all with skim, although it will work, you may not love the outcome. The recipe in the manual called for half heavy whipping cream and half half and half, and since it was my first time, I wasn’t planning on cutting down the fat…yet. At the store I just bought heavy whipping cream, which I toned down with some 2% milk I already had (which is what half and half is anyway).

The results? Wow. It was rich. I’m glad I now know I can tone the milkfat way back.

When the ice cream comes out of the bowl it’s pretty soft. You can eat it right away, but if you put it in the freezer for a while it’ll seem a lot more like real ice cream. In fact, when we ate it the next day, I kept saying, “This is like real ice cream!”

I’m also really happy with the ice cream attachment. Everything worked out perfectly the first time. You can keep the bowl in the freezer so it’s always ready to go. (In fact the manual recommends this!) I’m planning to make frozen yogurt next (healthy! sort of!).