I’ve always wanted an ice cream maker. I’ve stayed away from them because 1) I don’t have a lot of room in my freezer and 2) my hips don’t need an ice cream maker in the house.
I love to cook, and cook a lot from scratch. I’m happy to take shortcuts here and there, but the majority of my meals are cooked from scratch. I like the idea of knowing what’s in my food and having control over it (Type A personality right here).
Recently, I started hunting for coconut ice cream. A friend and I had eaten lunch at a Thai place we go to often, but I never realized (or had room) for dessert; I never realized they had coconut ice cream! It was so creamy and delicious, and perfect after a spicy meal. I still think about that ice cream, hence the beginning of the hunt.
The closest I could find to coconut ice cream was ice cream made with coconut milk at some local health food stores. I won’t drop names because while it`s delicious, I think it’s overpriced. I understand it’s a small business, and the stores selling it also need to make money, but at $9.00 per pint it’s not going to be in my budget on a regular basis.
So while grocery shopping last week…I walked by this:
President’s Choice chill and stir ice cream maker. It’s small, compact, and super cute!
And on sale.
At a regular price of $30, it wouldn’t blow the budget, but at $25, it jumped into my cart.
I did think about putting it back, remembering point #2 as previously expressed, but then realized that I could make my own coconut milk ice cream and it would only take a few batches to pay for itself. I thought about all the fresh ingredients I could use to make frozen treats and happily walked to the checkout.
I put the bowl in the freezer as soon as I got home and started researching recipes. I had some coconut milk in the pantry, so I started with coconut milk ice cream recipes.
I settled on this mint chip recipe from The Nourishing Gourmet (I know, you’d think I’d make coconut ice cream first, right? but I didn’t have any shredded coconut and had just! come back from the grocery store).
I let the base sit in the fridge overnight, as I had to wait for the ice cream bowl to freeze.
I’m so happy with the way the coconut ice cream turned out. It was really rich and creamy, you’d never know it was “good for you” ice cream. I brought it to a friend’s place- she is quite the connoisseur of ice cream and she loved it too.
I’ve been collecting ice cream recipes all week, and there are some healthy and some really indulgent ice creams out there, but now I’ve got a whole summer to experiment.
I tried making frozen yogurt yesterday, using Greek yogurt. The recipe got rave reviews on the site where I found it, but mine was rock hard. Even after leaving it out for 15 minutes, it was still rock hard and I actually broke the plastic container it was in when I tried to scoop it out. I’ll probably try again, but it may not be for a while.
Do you have an ice cream maker? (or make ice cream without one?)
What’s your favourite flavour?
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