Hand-Cranked Ice Cream

Making homemade ice cream was one of our favorite things to do when we had a bunch of people over while our children were growing up. We had enough people to crank the ice cream and it was heavenly. The children loved everything about it – cranking it and eating it. Here is a recipe that will work in old-fashioned hand-crank ice cream makers. This recipe will yield a little bit more than half a gallon of ice cream. Multiply the ingredients to make a larger quantity. Note that you need to scald the milk in advance and then let it cool down, which requires some advance planning.

Ingredients

2 quarts whole milk

1 c. heavy whipping cream

1½ c. honey

4 tsp. vanilla

½ tsp. salt

For the ice cream making process you will need salt used specifically for an ice cream maker and a bag of ice.

Directions

Scald the milk in a large pot, allow it to cool, and then refrigerate it. I usually scald it a day in advance and pour it into canning jars. Scalding the milk causes the milk crystals to form into ice cream with a nice texture. The flavor will be the same whether you scald the milk or not. I suggest you dissolve the honey into the milk while it’s hot. You can also substitute maple syrup for the honey, and this is runnier so will blend into the milk more easily if you don’t dissolve it into hot milk in advance. You do have to scald the milk in advance and cool it back down because you can’t make ice cream with warm milk. (Ice cream will happen without scalding the milk but the texture might be less than desirable.)

Note that this recipe works fine with “lactose-free” milk. There is actually no such thing as lactose-free milk. This milk actually contains lactase enzyme to help digest the lactose. So you could simply use regular milk and take a lactase enzyme tablet. (The higher the fat content of the milk, the less problem the lactose-intolerant person will have with it.)

To make the ice cream, combine all the ingredients in the canister of the ice cream maker, insert the beater, close it up. Put crushed ice around the canister and sprinkle the salt on top of the ice. Start cranking. Usually it takes about 20 minutes to crank a batch of ice cream. When it starts to feel stiff and hard to crank then it’s probably done. You can always open it up to check and then close it up and keep cranking if you want the ice cream thicker.

Eat well, be well, live deliciously!