Jimmy's Test Kitchen

I scream, you scream we all scream for ice cream!  It was a good time for ice cream as the weather turned close to the 80's this week.  So, I figured let's try to make some homemade ice cream and since it's been almost 3 weeks since my last post. I just had one small problem.  I don't own an ice cream maker.  I did however just pick up a manual food processor from The Pampered Chef and i figured let's put it to work!

I didn't want to go through all the work of making a custard and then I remembered that I saw a recipe on Good eats where Alton used banana's so the cream mixture would be thicker. 

So, here are my ingredients:

1 Frozen banana (half thawed)

1 cup Frozen Strawberries

1/2 cup of Honey

1 1/2 cup of cream.

I start by pulsing the frozen banana  in the food processor.  Then I mix the honey in the cream and pour the mixture in.  You can see that my honey had crystallized which is a problem.  To solve this, I put it in the microwave for 45 second pulses for about 4 minutes and it became liquid enough to use.  I then added the cream mixture and strawberries until it becomes more or less a smothiee and we were done!

I had thought that I could start freezing the mixture inside the food processor taking it out every 5-10 minutes and pulsing it a few times.  But it was soon apparent that the lid would freeze shut and the sides of the processor would freeze first and not get blended in.   After about 30 minutes, I transferred the mixture into a zipper plastic bag.   Every 10 minutes I would check on the mixture, mix it around and put it back.   This took a lot of attention. (Thank God for the timer on my Iphone). 

When the mixture became thicker I transferred it to a metal bowl.  The mixture should look like the picture to the right. It kind of looks like thousand island dressing in the picture.  When the ice cream became thicker, I only had to check on it every 30 minutes to whip with a spoon until it set into a firmer consistency to leave it in the freezer overnight. 

Overall, it came out fairly decent.  A lot of work when I could have gone and bought a quart of Ben and Jerry's at the market, but what would be the fun in that?  I was in an experimenting mood and if i had some liquid nitrogen, I would have used some!

The ice cream turned out pretty good.  It had a few ice chunks in it.  Definitely edible.  Refined?  Not quite. But the ice chunks felt like bits and pieces of strawberries so it wasn't so bad. 

Verdict, I need to get me an ice cream maker.

Thanks for reading!

-Jimmy