Ice Cream Follies

My girlfriend and I are enjoying a show called Good Eats, featuring the wacky Alton Brown, which inspired us to make our own ice cream. The show tells us you want the ice cream maker that does not require ice. We buy a reasonable looking model from a company named Rival®. Notice the label reading "Easy to Use... No Ice or Rock Salt Needed". [Update 03/25/2004 - Updated the URL to add an "x" to an "asp". Sigh. This page lumps all their ice cream makers into one page and does not show any detail.]

The box

We follow the recipe and pre-cool it in the fridge. We load the ice cream in the ice cream maker and turn it on. It's noisy. It should take 30, but at 15 minutes in, it's not thickening.

Then my girlfriend looks in the manual and laughs. You have to freeze it over 20 hours before using it. It's basically a huge version of one of those frozen mugs.

in the freezer

What's up with that? Talk about a misleading label. My girlfriend and I had both assumed there was cool endothermic machinery involved. A quick Google search reveals that this is true of all iceless ice cream makers.

Posted by Chad Lundgren on Saturday, May 31, 2003 (Link)

Comments

Posted by Vincent Monday, June 2, 2003 at 11:38 AM

did the ice cream taste sort of icey if you did make some? me personly the stuff in a store cause i do not have to make it heeh.

Posted by Chad Lundgren Monday, June 2, 2003 at 05:09 PM

Actually, the ice cream did not taste icey, which means we did it right. We're still going to tinker with the recipe.

Posted by BillM Tuesday, June 3, 2003 at 09:10 PM

I like Good Eats. I saw the episode "Amber Waves" which was on making beer, which inspired me to try it. Something I've always wanted to do. So far; one batch of spoiled beer and another that I haven't dared to try yet. I found the message board for his show to be a great resource of information. Professional brewers really slammed him on it, but his response was along the lines of, "You can only do just so much in one show. The idea is to inspire people to try something new, not to show single thing."

Also, a good use for old (not too old) peppermint candy canes is to break them up in a vanilla recipe. If you leave the pieces large, then they don't all desolve which make for a crunch ice cream.

Good luck on your experiments and have fun.

Posted by Roslee Orndorff Wednesday, June 4, 2003 at 12:05 AM

This is just soooo "Chad" I can barely keep from waking my patitents with my laughter.

Home made ice creams, sherbets, sorbets, etc., are great! I like the ability to customize the flavors. SOme recipes don't call for fully cooking the custard base, but that's just aking for trouble with uncooked eggs.

There are some great gelato recipes out there....go and explore!

Posted by Monte Mitzelfelt Thursday, June 12, 2003 at 01:34 AM

Alton Brown is a proponent of Philadelphia style ice creams which, unlike the custard aka French style, does not contain any eggs and requires no cooking. Gelato in a conventional ice cream maker, unfortunately, does not quit match up with gelato made in high-tech freezers that the Italians have been perfecting for the last 100 years. For the only true gelato in town, go to the Dos Hermanos (formerly Scotti Gelati) at San Mateo an I-40. The variety has decreased since Scott went out of business, but the quality has not suffered at all. Remember to get their by 3:00pm as that's when they close.