Ice Cream Maker

I learned one thing when I got married. The Bertrams love ice cream. I mean LOVE. So for Ryan's birthday I decided to buy an ice cream maker.

I ordered one for him on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, although I ordered a new one, the one they sent me was used and even had a sticky handprint on it! (Ugh!) So I returned it and had to get a new one for Ryan at the last minute. I went to Bed Bath & Beyond, where they only had three to pick from. I went for the $50 Cuisinart ice cream maker. It has an isulated bucket that has some sort of freezable liquid in the middle. You don't need to worry about rock salt or anything; you just put the bucket in the freezer a day before you want your ice cream, and it's ready to go. (The instructions recommend just generally keeping it in the freezer at all times, so you don't have to plan ahead so much, which is what I've done. I stick it in there each time it dries after I wash it.)

So far, I've made peanut butter cup (which has peanut butter mixed into the ice cream itself, and chopped up Mini Reeses Cups), strawberry, and chocolate ice cream with the Mini Reeses Cups (seen to the left). I made the recipes according to the recipe book, which uses a LOT of cream and whole milk. I'm so used to low fat food that I found it a little gross, because there was so much fat it coated my mouth. However, I made the chocolate ice cream with some Land o' Lakes fat free half and half and it turned out much better. (I can't quite figure out how you can have fat free half and half. I mean, isn't fat one of the "halves" in half and half?)

Quite honestly, when we did our first batch, which was very thick because of all the peanut butter, the motor got bogged down and the whole thing came to a stop. I'm not terribly impressed with the unit for the $50 I paid. My hope, though, is that we'll end up saving money because we won't be paying $4 a tub for ice cream. I still have to figure out how much a batch of ice cream costs, although it really depends on the ingredients you put in. Milk products aren't exactly cheap nowadays, so it's not like we're saving tons of money, but over the course of the next year or so I'm sure we'll make up for it. Plus, it's fun being able to experiment. My next recipe to try is cheesecake ice cream, which uses cream cheese and mascarpone. Yummmy!