my grandmother’s homemade ice cream

At the end of July we had a homemade ice cream party at the apartments behind our church.

A big old fashioned ice cream social.

It was all kinds of fun, and the ice cream was definitely the highlight.

Before the event Daddy and I were making our ice cream together at my house on the back porch.

We each had an ice cream freezer.

Taido usually makes the homemade ice cream around here, and he was in Chicago, so I was trying to read all the instructions on the ice cream makers, plus the recipe plus the rock salt box.

As we were sort of haphazardly adding in all the ingredients and then packing the ice and salt around the freezers, I was reading the instructions on the rock salt box aloud to Daddy.

Fill freezer tub with a mixture of one part Morton Ice Cream Salt  and eight parts crushed ice to a level well above the line of the mixture in the ice cream container.

Daddy was just randomly dumping the salt and ice around the freezer, which of course, everyone does.

Does anyone measure it?  Probably not, but I was about to.

He felt free to ignore my instructions.  I felt free to keep adding rock salt.

Then when the ice cream was close to done, and the freezers stopped, I read from the box again,

To harden the ice cream, remove the dasher; seal container. Drain off ice and salt mixture; repack freezer tube with a mixture of three parts crushed ice to one part Morton Ice Cream Salt.

Daddy didn’t seem to be draining and repacking, so I read through it again.  It was a super hot day, and all the ice was melting quickly, so I thought we might should drain and repack according to the instructions.

His repsonse:

Keep reading…I think further down it also says to dump a couple boxes of that stuff off the deck while you’re at it.

Right.

We left it.

And it turned out fine.

Here’s my grandmother’s recipe.  It uses raw eggs and you don’t cook them first (gasp) but it is the best homemade vanilla ice cream.  EVER.

Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

(This recipe makes 2 quarts.  I double it because my ice cream freezer is giant! 5 quarts.  LOVE IT!)

4 eggs

3 tablespoons vanilla

1 vanilla bean, scraped

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 cups whipping cream

2 cups 1/2 and 1/2

2-3 cups milk

Mix ingredients with electric mixer.  Pour into ice cream freezer and follow manufacturer’s instructions.