Last month, we tried out a scientific experiment using rock salt and milk. Turns out you can make ice cream in ziplock bags without any fancy machinery, http://scienceofeverydaylife.discoveryeducation.com/families/pdfs/activities/Kitchen-Chemistry.pdf. We even came up with an idea to ease this rudimentary work load: roll the bags in an oatmeal canister to help churn.
Now the "little people" are eager to make more ice cream. What a coincidence that we found a hand crank ice cream maker (requiring no rock salt, to my dismay) at the yard sale yesterday, for only $2. Our only problem is we are not really vanilla people. All the basic ice cream recipes with simple ingredients are for vanilla. I had no idea that most ice creams contain eggs too. That was never an ingredient in the ice cream I made as a kid at camp.
So, what to do? I googled this conundrum without any success. Then it occurred to me that if you can melt chocolate and add it to the cooked ice cream recipes, why not use chocolate milk? (Duh?!) Honestly, I had to google how to make chocolate milk since I only know how to make it with Hershey's syrup, http://fullthymestudent.com/homemade-chocolate-milk/. Using a pre-manufactured bottle sort of defeats the purpose of making ice cream from simple ingredients.
Now we will have to report back on (see below):
1. How the hand crank ice cream maker compares to the rudimentary system of ziplock bags and rock salt
2. How the chocolate milk ice cream turned out
3. When we will be holding our first ice cream stand
Follow up:
1. The "little people" preferred the rudimentary ice cream to the fancy ice cream.
2. The vanilla was preferred by all the "little people", but I still prefer chocolate to vanilla (even if I know the taste needs some work).
3. The first ice cream stand will probably be in "June".
