Many months ago (maybe years) Maria mentioned she thought it would be really cool to have an ice cream maker. So I told her we have one. This was a surprise to her, since I got it for my 31st birthday (she was 2 at the time) and used it exactly once. It just seemed like a lot of work and with little kids around, it just never sounded like a fun thing to do. After a while, I forgot I had it.
So at one point I promised Maria that we would take out (find) the ice cream maker, dust it off, and make some ice cream. Of course, I never did. I was feeling bad about my empty "Sometime" answer, so I recently told her we would do it sometime this summer. I always make this stupid promise, because during the school year, the summer always seems like an endless, perfect time, and if summer would just hurry up and get here I would promise to do just about anything.
But of course, I had forgotten about the ice cream maker. Until Saturday when Ben and I were killing time at the mall and Williams Sonoma had cans of "Ice Cream Starter" in the window. You only need to add Half and Half and Heavy Cream and drop the mixture into the ice cream machine. Could it be? A way to keep the promise to Maria with as little effort as possible? Perfect! Sign me up! I bought it without even checking the price. I will be a good mother! I will keep the ice cream promise!
Tuesday was a blah day. Rainy, and we had to go to school in the morning for Sam's reading assessment. Ben was gone at a middle school retreat all day. In the car on the way to school, Sam says, "So, what are we going to do today?" which usually makes me crazy, but not Tuesday. I said, "Let's make some home-made ice cream." Cheers from the back seat. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, I have to admit.
On the way home from school, I told the kids I would dig out the ice cream machine and clean it up, then we would make some right after lunch. I found the machine in the basement, brought it upstairs and cleaned it out. Then I realized even though it's a very simple machine, I still had no memory of how to run the thing. And the idea of trying to find the directions in our "Black Box" of instruction manuals of any appliance we have ever owned seemed daunting.
But we have the Internet! I downloaded the manual fairly easily and was once again pretty pleased with myself for getting this project in motion. Then I ran into the first road block. The main part of the ice cream machine needs to be frozen. (O.K., it makes sense, but I am not ashamed to admit that I had not thought of that yet.) And guess what? It takes anywhere from 6-24 hours to freeze. Either lunch was going to be at 5:00, or we were not going to be making ice cream right after lunch. So I put the ice cream bin in the back of the freezer, hoping to make it freeze as fast as possible, and then told the kids it looked more like a mid to late afternoon project.
They took the news well, since ice cream was still in their near future, and we had lunch. Meanwhile, I read in the instructions that once you couldn't hear the water inside the insulated bin swishing around, it was good to go. So around 3:00 I checked, and there was no swishing, I'm certain of it. It was short of the 6-24 hours (only about 4 hours), but I heard no swishing. And the kids were really bored. So we made the recipe and poured it into the machine. After it had ran for 30 minutes, the ice cream was still very runny, but since that was the longest the machine supposedly needs, we poured our runny ice cream into a container and put it in the freezer. Slight disappointment, but we were holing out hope we would have ice cream for dessert at dinner.
That didn't happen. "Maybe for an evening snack" I told them. And sure enough, by about 8:00 it was edible. And actually very good. Ben and Maria especially like it - it's a little too rich for me and Sam just gets tired of ice cream easily.
Tonight, we made the second batch. The ice cream bin has been in the freezer since the first batch. And tonight it was way better. So creamy, so rich. We ate some right out of the machine without having to put it in the freezer first. Now we know the bin was just not cold enough the first time.
And since you can never have too much of a good thing, we started wondering if the vanilla ice cream starter is as good as the chocolate. We should buy some and try it! We should make some for Sam's birthday party! We should order it online right now because summer is almost over and they might run out before we get to a mall with a Williams Sonoma again!
And guess what? It's back ordered until September 29, which is after Sam's party. So either I suck it up and put more work into an ice cream recipe from scratch, or we get to a mall soon. Or we give up the idea all together. Who knows? We'll probably forget all about it when we go back to school.
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