My Dear "Kindred Spirit,"

My Dear “Kindred Spirit,”

Homemade ice cream. In January. Because I’m just that kind of awesome.

And you can be too!

A few months ago I bought into a herd share in southern Tennessee, and now every Thursday I go pick up my gallon of milk for the week. Is there anything quite as lovely to behold as the beautiful cream line you get on a jar of raw milk?

I’ve got this thing about cream. I think it’s pretty much the answer to the world’s problems.

But, that being said, I actually don’t find myself using that much of it. I tend to make yogurt and/or kefir with my raw milk, and I prefer using somewhat skimmed milk for that because yogurt that has separated into “yogurt cream” and “yogurt milk” is just a little odd. Not that I don’t still eat it, I just don’t prefer it. And it kinda seems like a waste of the lovely cream to make it into yogurt.

So I skim nearly a quart of cream off every gallon of milk I get, and even after using it generously in tea and soup and anything else I can think of, I usually still end up with an extra quart of cream every two weeks or so.

The sensible thing to do with this extra cream? Make ice cream, of course!

The Ant and cousin both seem to be gifted with the ability to find amazing things at thrift stores, and one of them found me a hand crank ice cream maker for a few dollars. Since then, it’s been ice cream galore!

Ok, ok. I know you’ve already been drooling for the past several paragraphs just at the thought of homemade, raw milk ice cream, so I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. Here you go. The super easy ice cream “formula,” so you can be as awesome as I am and make amazing ice cream in the middle of winter:

Basic Homemade Ice Cream

• 1 quart (that’s 4 cups if you weren’t sure) cream. Preferably skimmed off the top of some raw milk, but if you don’t have access to raw milk the recipe will still work with grocery store cream. (*sigh…*) Also, it doesn’t have to be all cream, you can do part milk if you like, but of course the higher the percentage of cream there is the richer and – uh – “cream”ier it will be).
• 2-4 egg yolks. Good quality eggs (from pastured hens) are of course recommended, but again, if you must, regular eggs will work. Just use the yolk, and please don’t freak out too much about eating raw egg. I really think all the fear around eating raw eggs was just generated by our mothers and grandmothers because they got tired of us stealing all the cookie dough before they had a chance to bake it. Seriously, it’s not nearly as dangerous as people make it out to be, especially if you’re using good quality eggs!
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup sweetener. You could use regular sugar. Isn’t that so boring, though? I’ve used coconut palm sugar, honey, and maple syrup in the past. The coconut sugar has the most unnoticeable taste. The honey gives you a bit of an “oh, there’s honey in here!” taste when you first start eating it, and then you don’t think about or notice it again, and the maple syrup gives a maple aftertaste.
• A few teaspoons vanilla extract (seriously, who even measures vanilla? We should stop talking about vanilla extract in terms of teaspoons and start talking about “splashes” instead. About 2 splashes vanilla extract!)

And that’s really all there is to it. Blend those ingredients, and use your imagination to add whatever else you like – some chocolate chips for vanilla chocolate chip, 1/4-1/2 cup of cocoa powder for chocolate… I need to branch out into the strawberry and peach territory but haven’t quite gotten there yet.

Then freeze it all in whatever ice cream maker you have, and enjoy!

Oh, and be sure you make a batch at some point using maple syrup as the sweetener. It makes the most AMAZING vanilla maple flavor. I tried that one earlier today – made a batch in between doing laundry and baking some grain-free pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. So good!

And, yeah. Pumpkin chocolate chip muffins AND vanilla maple ice cream. Don’t you wish you were at THIS house today!! 😀

Now, if you’ll excuse me. I – uh – I have to… Well, that is, you see… I just… I just need to take pictures! That’s right! I’m sure you guys want a pretty picture of this ice cream, so just to be nice I’ll go dish some up and take a picture for y’all. You’re welcome, no problem at all! I’m just that kind of thoughtful person.

Love, N.

P.S. Such a shame that I couldn’t get it back into the container after dishing out and photographing it…. No worries, though. I didn’t let it go to waste.