Fun for the Kids

 

If you want to make the kids a fun dessert, but also want to make them work for it, this is the recipe for you.

Ice Cream in a Bag

Ingredients:

1 cup milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
12 tablespoons rock salt
1 quart-size plastic baggie
1 gallon-size plastic baggie
Ice

Directions:

Put vanilla, milk, and sugar into a quart-size bag. Then close the bag and seal it shut with duct tape. Place the quart-size bag inside the gallon-size bag. In the gallon-size bag, put about 2 cups of ice (filled half way) and add the rock salt on top of it. Close the big bag.

Shake the bags for about 10 minutes, or until you have reached your desired ice cream consistency. Remove the quart-size bag from the gallon-size bag. Wash or remove salt from bag (so it doesn't get in the ice cream when you open the bag). Cut off a corner of the quart-size bag and squeeze the ice cream into a cup or bowl.

Serving size: Makes 1 serving.

Source: We have been making this for a long time. I found this recipe years ago on a website, but I don't remember specifically which one.

Notes: You can use any kind of milk for this activity: heavy whipping cream, half-and-half, whole milk, 2%, 1%, even skim milk. It just depends on what you have on hand and how rich you want your ice cream to be.

Also, even with all the shaking in the world, you are going to get a soft ice cream consistency. If you want it more firm, you can ripen it in the freezer for an hour or longer.

You can create different flavors by using chocolate milk (or adding chocolate syrup to the plain milk), by adding strawberry syrup to make strawberry ice cream, or caramel syrup to make caramel ice cream, etc. You can also add fun toppings (such as your favorite candies, crushed cookies, or mashed or chopped fruit).

 

Above: I used packing tape to seal my quart-size bag because I was out of duct tape! I also doubled the recipe and put both servings into the quart-size bag this time. It worked fine.

 Above: We had a little ice cream left over, so I put it in the freezer, but I forgot to take a picture of it after it had ripened. So, all the pictures you have are when it was in the soft serve phase. I also tried a slightly different version that I found in a book, but now for the life of me, I can't find my copy of it. When I find it, I will post it here.