Ice cream!

I got an ice cream maker attachment to my mixer for Christmas!  Yaaaay!  Thanks Sissy!  (And husband thanks you too!)  It's kind of intimidating to make ice cream for the first time, so many rules about refrigeration and you have to cook stuff and then cool again and oh man so much prep time I had no idea... BUT IT'S WORTH IT!  MMMmmmm!!  For my very first try, I made simple vanilla, following the recipe that came with the bowl (ridiculous number of egg yolks, cream, half and half, vanilla, pinch of salt).  When you first make it, it's soft serve, and later on when you put the leftovers in the freezer, they get hard as a rock.  I'll have to work on that.   

Best vanilla ice cream I'd ever had (except for Carvel!)

I added some strawberries, and it was kind of melty, mmm

Then, I made another variety of vanilla, which i think was even better!  But Husband didn't like it.  I loved it though!!  I didn't have any vanilla, so I used 4 tsp of real maple syrup.  And i didn't have any regular sugar, so i used brown.  WHAT A DREAM!!  Buttery flavor, not maple-y, next time i'm going to mix in some crushed nuts!  (And I learned on this batch that it's ok if you accidentally cook your eggs too much, push it through a fine strainer and it all works out A-ok!)

And then it gets even better.  This past weekend I tried the "lazy" method of ice cream making.  No cooking, no waiting as long as you already had the bowl in the freezer!  Here's what you need:

• 1 can of evaporated milk (i used 2%)
• 1 can of condensed milk (we always have plenty of this since it's husband's favorite "food")
• 1 cup of milk (i used 2%)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp peppermint extract
• handful or 2 of mini chocolate chips

mix them all together (except for the chocolate chips), put in the fridge if you're worried about mixture not being cold enough (or refrigerate cans first maybe?)  I refrigerated for like 5 minutes, not really sure why I bothered.  use your ice cream maker as directed, mix in mini chocolate chips at the last minute.  Mine was extra soft serve, i guess the mixture wasn't cold enough to begin with, but oooooh sweet satisfaction!  so tasty, and so little effort!  Froze up alright, lots of ice crystals though, i think all of my problems are base on the fact that there was too much water and too little fat.  I read that adding some corn starch or using whole milk can fix that... i'll try it next time!

Each time I've made ice cream so far, I've put it in 2 containers and hidden one in the freezer so that Husband can't eat it all on the 1st day!  So far the record is 4 days with this rationing method.