Crank it Out!

I'm only a little upset with my self for not hauling my ice cream maker across the ocean with me. It is, after all, a French made maker, so I would feel like I'd be bringing it back to its homeland. Still...I couldn't bring everything with me, and it's now sitting in climate-controlled storage in New Jersey.

I got this ice cream maker ages ago when I was living in a tiny Manhattan studio apartment. The fact that I had an ice-box freezer didn't deter me. What did deter me is that I couldn't get the canister to fit in the ice box. Also, I got a hand-cranked model. Not one that you need a rock salt and ice to keep cool, but in the spirt of that. If you just plug it in and press a button, why bother? That's just too easy. And loud. Some of them are very loud.

So I defrosted the tiny freezer to get the insulating layer of ice out. The canister still didn't fit.

In true Sara Style, I MADE IT FIT. I bent the ice box into a less rectangular shape so the canister would be able to squeeze in. The problem being that now the door to the icebox wouldn't shut completely, and nothing really got hard-frozen in there ever again.

Alas, no one stays in Manhattan studios forever. I eventually moved to a place with a real freezer. That's when the real production started.

I made basic ice creams. I made indulgent ice creams. I made sorbets. I even made weird ice creams, with avocado and sweet corn kernels. Basil and strawberry! Tomato and vodka sorbet with horseradish! Dark chocolate raspberry swirl! Beer ice cream with salty chocolate-covered peanuts! Bourbon ice cream with sweet vermouth syrup and a cherry on top! Whatever I could imagine up, it got cooked with cream and egg yolks, churned and frozen into a quart of awesome. I loved that thing.

I was pretty psyched to see these guys on the street selling their goods:

They were doing it the real way, with ice and rock salt and muscles.

I didn't even know, or care, what flavor we were dealing with here. I wanted. Now.

Oh, it was lovely. Real vanilla bean, coconut. My homemade ice cream fix.