Fun With Food - Day 5 - Homemade Ice Cream

Making homemade ice cream is one of the activities on our Summer Bucket List.  We followed the same directions we used last summer.

First, we put 2 TBSP sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, and 1 cup of half and half into a quart size plastic storage bag.  Then, we put 1/2 cup Kosher salt into a gallon size plastic storage bag and filled the bag halfway with ice.  Next, we put the quart size sealed bags of ice cream ingredients inside the gallon size bags of ice and salt, sealed them, and began to shake.

Just like last year, C and R began shaking their bags, and that lasted all of thirty seconds or so before they asked me to shake the bags for them.  So, once again, I danced around the kitchen shaking their ice cream bags for about five minutes.

Once the ice cream was similar to soft serve, I opened the bags and let C and R add their mix-ins.  They added broken Twix and Kit Kat candy bars.

Then they mixed it all up a bit and we put the bags in the freezer.

After a little while, we took the bags out, scooped the ice cream into our frozen dessert dishes, added a little whipped cream (only for C, R doesn't like whipped cream) and enjoyed the special treat!

Well, the truth is that they ate some of it and then decided that it isn't as good as the ice cream they usually have! 

If you want to know why you put salt helps make ice cream, here is what I wrote in my post last year:  32 degrees is the melting point of ice, but the ice cream mixture will not freeze unless the temperature gets below 27 degrees.  The salt changes the melting point of the ice. When you add salt to the ice, it lowers the freezing point of the ice, so even more energy has to be absorbed from the environment in order for the ice to melt. This makes the ice colder than it was before and the ice cream freezes.

For more science fun, visit Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.