Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Home-made Treats

We've been doing a little bit of at home treat making:

Vanilla Ice Cream

This was our first experiment with ice cream - and I'm incredibly pleased with the results! I don't know if it's much cheaper than buying prepackaged - but I still love being able to make things at home and having control over the ingredients!


edit: oops! the recipe!

This recipe was for my vintage handcrank machine - but I ran it through our new electric model (long story) and it came out great!

Basic Vanilla Ice Cream

2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 cups light cream
4 tablespoons vanilla

Scald milk. Add sugar and salt to milk and stir until dissolved. Add cream. Stir in vanilla. Cool over night in fridge. Turn into freezer and freeze per manufacturer's directions.

Makes 2 quarts.




:was going to take a picture, but didn't have my camera - and then the boys ate it all! Next time, promise! Next up, chocolate ice cream:


Chocolate Syrup

Great on ice cream or for chocolate milk! It does have a bit of sugar - you could experiment to see what works for you. Maybe try some xylitol in place of the sugar? Also, the syrup does come out a little thin. It doesn't bother me, but you could probably thicken it up with some corn syrup.



1 cup of cocoa powder
1.5 cups sugar
dash of salt
1.5 cups water
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix in sauce pan. Boil 3-5 minutes, sauce will thicken slightly. Keep in fridge. I'm not sure exactly how long the shelf life is but I kept our last batch in the fridge almost 2 months before it ran out, and it was still good.


:Picture is from last batch, but you get the idea!:




Strawberry Yogurt Pops

Not really a recipe, more of an idea. We've been making our own popsicles all summer (again, it's fun, cheap and I can control what goes in!) So this past week we pureed up some vanilla yogurt and strawberries that were frozen back in June. That's what that the picture was in the weekend review - poured them into our molds and froze away!

Quick, easy, healthy, cold(!) snack!

They were a bit too yogurty and thick. So next time I would use more berries and less yogurt (I didn't measure, I used the bottom of a large carton - maybe a cup? And about the same in berries) Or maybe thin it with milk or cream? Can you freeze cream? Or pudding! Yum. I think pudding.


5 comments:

Valkyrie said...

Nom nom! There is nothing quite as delicious as homemade ice cream. I would make it but I don't have room in my freezer. What kind of ice cream maker did you use? Most of the modern ones, you need to stick the container in the freezer, and they take up a lot of space.

gardenofsimple said...

I have an old hand crank one, that holds up to 6 quarts, but I used a new electric 4 quart one. The cylinder was tall, but thin and didn't take up much room at all. I put it in my stand up freezer, but also had it in our little fridge freezer and it fit well

Sara said...

I cannot live without my Hershey syrup. Sorry, never going to make homemade chocolate syrup. It has to be Hershey's.

The pudding pops sound interesting! I'm going to do some yogurt pops for Jesse. James might have to do the Kool-aid pops.

gardenofsimple said...

The homemade syrup tastes just.like.Hershey's.

Not even kidding. Give it a try.

Sara said...

Imma skeptic. I'll try though. I'll have to plan accordingly so I have an outlet for it if it isn't to Hershey standard. ;)