Kids make Oreo Ice Cream - National Ice Cream Day - July 19th

Happy Sunday! Today is National Ice Cream Day! In 1984, President Ronald Reagan declared July National Ice Cream Month, and the third Sunday of July National Ice Cream Day! Last year we celebrated at Disneyland with ginormous ice cream cones. This year we're going to do something a little different.
Hey Alli and Ian! Did you know you can make your own ice cream at home?
Alli and Ian - Can we do it Daddy?
Absolutely!

It all starts with a good recipe. This one from the NY Times titled The Only Ice Cream Recipe You'll Ever Need has 1600 reviews and has 5 stars! I think we've got to make that recipe.
There's really not a lot to it. Just cream, milk, sugar, salt, and egg yolks, then whatever flavoring you want to put in it.
The scale makes it easy to add the right amount of any ingredient without having to get measuring cups dirty.

Alli added the milk for us.

Ian is taking care of the cream. Now it has to come up to a simmer. I've got the candy thermometer in there to keep an eye on things.

The kids are pretty good at cracking eggs, but for separating the yolks, I'm going to do that today. Thanks Alli for getting my picture.

And Ian is whisking all those eggs up.

And because we don't want to make scrambled eggs, we're going to temper them by slowing bringing up their temperature. Ian whisked so quick that his arm was getting tired, as I slowly spooned in scoops of the hot ice cream base.

After mixing everything together, we've got to make sure it gets up to 170F, since we've got eggs in there. Ian kept a good eye on the thermometer and let me know as we were getting close.

Into a large metal bowl, Ian held the spoon while I poured in 2 tsp of vanilla extract.

Thanks for the picture Ian. Now that we've hit 170F it's time to remove this from the heat.

Alli held the fine mesh strainer while I poured our hot vanilla ice cream base in. When we were done, the hot liquid went into the fridge to chill for 4 hours.

I do not have an electric ice cream maker, or even a manual ice cream maker. So instead, I'm using a two bowls method. For the past week, at the end of the night, I've been saving ice cubes in a bag. Now I've got plenty to make ice cream with! With one larger metal bowl, we've filled it with ice, and now we're adding Ice Cream salt.

I put a couple oven pads down underneath it to insulate it from the countertop. It's getting pretty frosty!

The ice cream mix is now chilled and ready to be mixed. The kids want to taste it now, and since the eggs are cooked, we definitely can. They both loved it. It does taste like melted ice cream. I actually think it has a bit of an eggnog flavor. The flavor of the egg yolks definitely comes through.

Alright, now it's time to get mixing. The goal is to have the ice cream base freeze against the side of the metal bowl and then the mixer will scrape it off. We're hoping for tiny little ice crystals. If we were to put this directly into the freezer, we'd end up with a hard block of ice. Ice cream has tiny crystals and a little bit of air mixed into it.

After 10-12 minutes, it's starting to look like soft serve ice cream.

Which means it's time to add our flavorings. At the beginning of this I asked the kids what flavor ice cream we should make. They both agreed on Oreo. Yep, these are my kids.
Can you tell by their chocolate smiles that they had a cookie before this picture?

Using the meat pounder and a plastic bag, Ian crushed up a few cookies.

And then Alli took her turn.

All that goes into the mixture. We'll stir it a few more times (Daddy added a few more whole cookies), and then it's time for it to go into the freezer!

The next day, after lunch, the kids were excited to bring out their own homemade ice cream for everyone to enjoy!

I got a few scoops out, and yes, I can see there's big pieces of Oreo in here.

Of course I'll take a picture for you guys. Both of you did such a great job making this!

Smile guys! It's time to dig in!

Alli said that Oreos are Milk's favorite cookie and Ice Cream's favorite cookie. Yes, I see what you've done with your Oreo Ian. It's cookies and cream.

The ice cream really was tasty! We all had fun making our very own ice cream at home! Happy Ice Cream Day!