Rainbow ice cream

Homemade ice cream and I have had a tumultuous relationship.

Several years ago, I got curious about the process of making homemade ice cream. I seemed to remember that my dad and stepmom had an ice cream maker that they'd received for a wedding gift years ago, so I inquired...sure enough, they did! They'd never used it and were happy to give it to us. Hubby and I made ice cream once. I was pregnant and craving the kind of fresh strawberry ice cream that tastes just like fresh, perfect strawberries drowned in rich whipped cream. I made the egg custard and for whatever reason, the look and smell of the egg/milk mixture just turned my stomach. Apparently the ice cream tasted pretty good; I wouldn't know. I made my husband leave the room if he was going to eat any, and even seeing the metal canister was enough to send my stomach into a tailspin. The ice cream maker went to the basement for a few years.

Last summer, we tried it again, thinking it would be a fun activity to do with the kids. We made ice cream maybe twice...it was fun, it was fine, it was kind of a hectic pain in the butt. We were running between smashing up ice cubes, adding more layers of ice and salt to the outside of the bucket, trying to keep the kids' fingers out of the moving parts. Fun, but not something you'd want to do very often.

Fast forward to this year. Some of my Twitter buddies routinely tweet about whipping up a batch of ice cream just because they feel like it. I just couldn't understand how. Finally, I asked, "What am I missing? How can you make ice cream that frequently and that easily?" And they directed me to this style of ice cream maker...one where you don't have to worry about the ice or the salt or the mess; you just have to stick a canister into the freezer for 24 hours prior to churning.

Now, I am not one to make frivolous purchases, but when I saw that I could get this ice cream maker for the cost of a dinner out, I just had to have it. We love ice cream; hubby and I (shhh, don't tell the kids!) have a little bowl almost every night after the little ones go to sleep.

I let the kids browse about 25 recipes....they picked rainbow vanilla ice cream, which we saw on Di's blog. I followed Di's recipe as written, except that we added the m&ms in the last five minutes of mixing instead of layering them in after churning. This created a pink ice cream, which delighted my little girl to no end.

So easy. So fun. No mess. And the ice cream was rich, creamy, vanilla-y deliciousness. The little guy (the one who doesn't like any of my homemade sandwich bread) didn't eat his...go figure...I truly do not understand. But the hubby, the little girl, and I loved this more than any ice cream ever, going back for seconds and "just one more spoonful" and licking the bowl clean.