Have you ever made ice cream?
When I was young, my parents had an ice cream maker which was a bucket in a bigger wooden bucket that had a motor attached. The ice cream mixture was put in the middle with ice and salt in the outer bucket. It looked sort of like this.
They didn’t use it too much, but when they did, the flavors they made were strawberry, mint chip and caramel pecan.
Do you make ice cream? What flavors do you make?
I can’t see the point of making it. Buying two litres of ice cream is cheaper than buying two litres of fresh milk.
That’s true for a lot of homemade stuff. Sewing something often costs more than store bought.
For some, I guess, it’s the customization.
Yes - I have made ice cream - but not for a while. Two flavours which my guests always liked - Brown Bread, and Rhubarb and Redcurrant.
Wow, exotic. . .for me, anyway. I’ve never had those flavors. Are those common flavors for ice cream there?
The ‘Brown Bread’ one was the ‘in thing’ in the 1970/1980s - often found in restaurants usually served with fresh straweberries. The Rhubarb/Redcurrant one was my own invention.
Brown Bread ice cream sounds a bit…umm, dislikeable, but I haven’t tried it - its probably very nice 
My favourite flavour is salted caramel, but I’m happy to try any flavour…and no I have never made my own ice cream. 
I remember back when I was a kid you could buy instant ice cream in a packet, I think you added milk and froze it, as you can imagine, it was yuk!!
That does sound yuk. Was it powder or liquid? I can’t even imagine it.
I had a go at making Cornish Vanilla ice cream once, a long time ago.
The recipe used clotted cream and egg yolks, vanilla pods and I can’t remember the rest.
This was in the days before you could buy modern electric ice cream making machines for home use, so I had to keep taking it out of the freezer compartment to try to beat while it was freezing.
It was a failure - the flavour was good but the texture was awful - it froze so hard and dense, it had to be cut into chunks, not scooped out!
I’ve never bothered making ice cream since.
Pretty much this is how my parents’ ice cream turned out. It didn’t have enough fat in it, so it turned icy. It tasted good, but it was more icy than creamy.
I used to make lots of ice cream when l had more hens, so always had lots of eggs.
I have only ever made Vanilla ice cream.
I did buy one of those ice cream makers that you stirred the ingredients, put in the freezer then stirred again. The ice cream wasn’t great.
Then l saw an advert in a local newspaper for an ICTC Gelato Chef ice cream maker and l bought it for £30. It’s an old model and quite large in size but similar new models are in their hundreds.
It has an in built freezer which saves the faff of putting the ice cream in the freezer and stirring it.
The ice cream made in the Gelato Chef is ready in 15-20 minutes. It is delicious, a bit like Mr Whippy ice cream.
This reminds me that I have an ice cream maker attachment for my stand mixer that I bought years ago that I have never used. It’s a bowl that you put in the freezer that has frozen liquid on the sides. You put the ingredients in the bowl and mix the ingredients with a special blade for the stand mixer. I wonder if it works.
It sounds similar to what you’re describing here. My guess would be that the ice cream wouldn’t be great either.
Bruce, Have you ever read the side of the tub to see what is contained in shop bought ice cream? It shocked me when l read what goes into it.
Some of the manufactured ice cream doesn’t even contain real milk it is made of…Reconstituted skimmed milk, gum and other weird stuff.
I remember ages ago a story about how EU regs had decreed certain necessary criteria as to what could and couldn’t be put into commercially made ice cream and how the big players had to abide by it. Think that some companies struggled to come to terms with how the necessary change to their historic tried and trusted recipes altered their product. Would be interesting to taste the difference between an ice cream made by Walls in say 1970 compared to one nowadays and also compare ingredients.
Edit - thinking back it was more the small independents/artisans who struggled with the required changes.
I agree if you look at the ingredients on so many products its frightening…I might have a go at making ice cream one day …if I ever get a kitchen 
Just went to look up the EU regs for ice cream and found this on a hasty search.
Can’t tell from this whether ice cream can have no milk fat in it. Does it depend on whether it’s EU or UK standards?
This has a little more which seems to say that under EU standards, there can be a bunch of different things under the label of ice cream.
Thanks @butterscotch for that research. Interesting. Thought the Christopher Booker article I’d read in the Sunday Telegraph predated that by a few years, but it’s long ago to all be of a haze lol.
Fortunately in Australia we have a very strong farm lobby. It cannot be called ice cream if it isn’t made of cream it has to be called iced confection or some such name. That is not to say it doesn’t have other dodgy ingredients
Coles own brand ice cream which is the cheapest you can buy:
INGREDIENTS: Water, Sugar Syrup, Dairy Ingredients (Milk Solids, Skim Milk Concentrate, Cream), Glucose Syrup (from Wheat), Maize Maltodextrin, Emulsifier (471), Vegetable Gums (412, 415, 410),Natural Flavours, Natural Colours (Caramelised Sugar, Carotene).
You can look up those numbers to find out what they are. for example Emulsifier (471) is made from seed oils.
Nothing there to be fearful of
All that having to take it out and whisk it if you haven’t got an ice cream machine is a pain and I’m banned from buying any more gadgets
But I do the one with condensed milk sometimes because it doesn’t need churning and you can just add any flavours you fancy
I always do this one if there’s left over Christmas Baileys, it’s lovely
https://onceuponafoodblog.com/no-churn-baileys-ice-cream-with-toasted-baileys-almonds/
