Old Fashioned Ice Cream

I bought an old fashioned Ice cream maker a few years ago.  I didn't really know what it was, but the colour was adorable and whatever it was intrigued me.  The people at the thrift store were excited that I bought it and asked me what it was because they had no idea either.  These are not at all common here and I assume that it was bought in the States by some seaman who thought his wife would enjoy using it.  Since it is practically unused and mint condition, I'm assuming the wife didn't really think it was such a hot idea.

But I love it and I have so often planned to use it, but never taken the plunge.  It's so funny how doing something that I haven't done before is so impossibly difficult.  And then once I do it, it's really easy.  So I decided to make Rhubarb Ice cream in it.

I love Rhubarb ice cream.  Nobody else seems to, which I find very strange.  But I had some rhubarb and there was a family party and I offered to bring dessert.  The family was a bit skeptical.  My daughter confessed to having serious doubts beforehand, but once they tasted, they were converted.  Or at least that is what they told me.

The recipe for the ice cream is very easy, I posted it before here.  Except this time I used a whole Vanilla pod for the ice cream instead of the vanilla sugar/essence that is specified in the recipe.  It's not a lot of ice cream, probably about a quart (or 1 liter).  There were 8 of us and all had a nice portion each, but it was also served with Rhubarb soup and whipped cream.  I actually like smaller recipes of ice cream since I like to make more flavors rather than a huge amount.  Coffee ice cream is probably my favorite, along with the Rhubarb and of course real Vanilla.  The taste is just so much better.

Making ice cream from scratch is very easy.  I started with two egg yolks, one tablespoon  powdered sugar, seeds from half a vanilla pod and mixed it together with a fork.

Five stalks of  rhubarb are chopped into little pieces and boiled with a little bit of water and 3,5 oz sugar.  Or one can use rhubarb mash from making the rhubarb soup.  The rhubarb is cooled while 1 and 1/4 cup of whipping cream is whipped.  Once the rhubarb has cooled, it is folded together and poured into the ice cream maker.

I had never used this old fashioned ice cream maker before, so I had little idea how much salt would be needed, but I bought 4 kilos (8punds) of rock salt.  I used about half of that, 2 kilos (4 pounds) and all the ice I had, alternating a dash of salt and a smattering of ice.  But I did make this recipe twice, and could churn it with that amount of salt and ice.  (This meant that I had some ice cream that was for me only after the party.  Oh, joy.)

Then churning by hand.  The mechanism of this is really interesting and I would actually love to have a smaller unit to use.  This large bucket is just a bit too big for the kitchen and so it has to reside in the garage, even if the turquoise  colour is just fantastic.

I didn't really know how long it would take to churn the ice cream.  It actually took shorter time than I thought, but then the amount of ice cream was only about half of the capacity of the ice cream maker.  I think it only took 15-20 minutes to churn the ice cream.  I loved peering into the ice cream  maker and watch how it moves the ice cream so slowly.  It all looks a bit weird, but then suddenly everything starts to flow smoothly.  I took the thing apart, emptied out the container and put the ice cream into the freezer to store it until it was time to go to the party.

I served the rhubarb ice cream with the fabulous rhubarb soup and lots of whipped cream.

There is nothing in this world that doesn't taste better with lots of whipped cream.  And then it was sprinkled with dark chocolate.  Although some cocoa nibs are also very good with this.  As is chopped dark Toblerone.