The Time I Made Mint Ice Cream

So here is what happened.

I came across an ice cream maker for 50% off. So I bought it, because, obviously.

Also, I'm a stress baker. Some people drink or gamble or scrub bathtubs (I'm looking at you, college roommate). Normally, I bake things. Today it was really hot, and I had this new ice cream maker so I made what I really wanted: Mint Chocolate Chip.


 So I googled. And I found an egg-less recipe. This was important because I am both impatient and lazy. Egg-less means you don't have to heat anything up. It also means there are no eggs, so it's less of a custard base? You just throw ingredients in a bowl and stir them.

Let's go on this journey together, shall we?

Supplies

Sugar, Cream, Milk, Salt, Peppermint Extract, Vanilla Extract, Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips

1 cup of Heavy Cream. 1 cup of milk.

1/2 cup of sugar

Add Vanilla to taste. You're supposed to measure it, but, you know. I added drop by drop and taste-tested it until it was good.

Add peppermint extract to taste (same as the vanilla, drop by drop.) This stuff is strong so take it easy. Also, in my extensive 5 minutes of research, I learned one should not use peppermint oil. Extract is where it's at. Now we know.

Stir it until the sugar dissolves.

Into the ice cream maker we gooooo...

So, you wait about 10 minutes until it's firming up a bit and then add the chips.

I thought the regular sized chocolate chips I had on hand might be hard to eat once frozen so I put some of the chips in a ziploc sandwich bag and beat the crap out of them with a meat tenderizer. I added them, handful by handful, into the ice cream maker.

I waited 20 more minutes.

If you were smart, you'd use this time to clean up.I did not. 

Instead, during this time, I got a spoon and tried to sample the ice cream while the machine was stirring. I knew this was a bad idea as I was doing it. However, I thought if I timed it juuuuuuuuuuust so I could get enough on the spoon to taste. What actually happened is that I almost broke the machine by sticking a spoon in it. So...don't do that.



I lifted off the top of the ice cream maker, and it looked like this:

I used a spatula to spoon the ice cream into 2 small tupperwear containers, and put them in the freezer.

After two hours, I took one of the containers out and made a bowl of ice cream.

Here's the Final Product!

What I learned:

- You have to freeze the bottom of the ice cream maker (I'm sure it has a name but don't know what it is) before you can make the ice cream. Probably overnight to be safe. What this means is you should always have it in the freezer JUST IN CASE the spirit moves you and you need homemade ice cream right. now.
- The peppermint tastes much stronger in the mixture before it gets frozen. Next time, I'm going to add the peppermint to taste and then add a bit more than that.
-  The recipe called for green food coloring, but I'm not a child. I knew I wouldn't be confused by something that isn't green tasting like mint. But. You do what you want to do there.
- Peppermint extract, not oil
- Don't put spoons in the mixer.