2/19/09

Homemade Ginger Vanilla Ice Cream

1 comments
Holy crap. Ever since little Evan did a post about ice cream made with Mimic-creme, I've been wanting to try it out. They have it here at the Drug Emporium, an enormous Walgreen's type store with a secret health food store in the back called Vitamins Plus. I always forget it's there until someone reminds me, but they have a ton of selection and better prices than Whole Foods and Kroger.

So I picked up some Mimiccreme thinking I would try Evan's method, only to discover than when your refrigerator has a ice maker, you don't own ice cube trays. On Monday, when it was supposed to be a state holiday, I stopped by work just to check my e-mail only to find out that we were supposed to be there anyway only no one told me. I felt like that imaginary time in jr. high, when everyone changed the time of the party and conveniently forgot to tell the smelly kid. I am the smelly kid.

So I was stuck at work, feeling sorry for myself, and decided to buy an ice cream maker. It's the grown up version of "fuck this, I want some ice cream." The feeling passed, and I didn't end up buying one, mainly because there were too many choices and I've never used one before. That night, however, we had a couple of Couchsurfers coming back to Vermont from California, and as we were pulling out of the driveway to hit the grocery store, Jay spied something in the back of their car. "Is that an ice cream maker?" It, indeed, was. After dinner, they brought it in and made ice cream. It was magical.

We put in about a cup of liquid per person, which ended up being some Mimiccreme and some soy milk. Then we added a little bit of vanilla, some ground ginger, and (in a stroke of brilliance) ground up chunks of candied ginger. We added some extra sugar, too, but the result came out too sweet, so I think in the future I'll taste it and keep it more creamy and less sweet. The ice cream maker the girls had was a Rival brand that one of them had picked up at a thrift store for $5. It had an inner container for the creamy mixture and an outer container for the ice and salt. They used a whole canister of table salt and layered it with the ice until it filled up, then plugged in the machine that magically made the ice cream.

I think the whole thing took about 45 minutes. I am buying an ice cream maker.