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Yesterday, after we finished the pizza in the solar oven, I had wanted to move right into this project. Make your own icecream in a ziplock. BUT……… I got embroiled in a *tiny* project with our cable company….. you know how that goes. So I didn’t get to the icecream until after dinner. I must say it turned out WAY better than I was expecting.

The ingredients are VERY simple:

1/2 cup of milk, half & half, or cream (We used cream which brought the calorie count up to 445)

one tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla, chocolate syrup, or strawberry syrup

rock salt or kosher salt, you can even do it with table salt

1 gallon size Ziplock (tip~ Hefty bags are not as airtight as Ziplock bags, just so you know)

1 quart size Ziplock

Pour cream into smaller ziplock,

then add sugar, and flavoring, and zip it up tight.

Fill the large ziplock half full of ice, and then add 6 tablespoons of salt.

Why do we add salt? On the surface of the ice, water molecules are constantly grouping together and forming ice. At the same time, some break away to form water. If more molecules are forming liquid than solid, we say the ice is melting. We say it is freezing if the opposite happens. Adding salt to ice causes a drastic reduction in the number of water molecules attaching to the ice. The number of molecules breaking away remains the same. Breaking away from the ice requires energy and this is achieved by taking heat from the surrounding liquid. The temperature of the salt and ice mixture drops (below 32ºF) until it is cold enough to freeze the icecream mixture.

Now place the small ziplock, with the cream mixture, inside the large ziplock, which has the ice and salt.

Here is the fun part! Start shaking! We shook for 20 minutes, but I’ll bet it didn’t take that long. The bag is extremely cold, so we got out the oven mitts to protect our skin from injury. We also had to get another large ziplock bag, because the Hefty bag sprung a leak. See, you can benefit from our little problems…

Why do we shake the mixture? Shaking or stirring prevents a build-up of large ice crystals that will cause a grainy texture in the icecream. It allows the icecream to chill uniformly. Agitation also mixes in tiny air bubbles which increases the volume, making the icecream light. The outcome is icecream with a smooth, creamy mixture of microscopic ice crystals, air bubbles, fat globules and sugary liquid.

When you are done shaking, you can take the small ziplock out of the large ziplock and scoop the icecream into a bowl. Add a spoon to partake of this deliciousness… ahh! It is SO good. Using the real cream made it taste wonderful! And just look at that beautiful texture!

The best test is the kid test………. It passed with flying colors. Next time we try chocolate. And trust me, there WILL be a next time!

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