Ice Cream Success!

Last night there was finally enough ice cream gone from the first two batches, so I got to make a couple more. Turns out that even though the freezer was below freezing in temperature, minus another 20 degrees makes a huge difference. This time I got ice cream, instead of milk shakes.  The first I made was peanut butter ice cream with chopped peanut butter cups mixed in.

Notice how it mounds on the spoon.  And it was only in the ice cream maker for 15 minutes.

In the bowl, straight from the ice cream maker.  A bit softer than regular ice cream, but more firmness than soft serve.  Which led me to wonder, what if I leave it in there longer next time?

The second batch was cheesecake ice cream.  The mixture going in tasted like cream cheese frosting.  The ice cream that came out was even better.  For this batch, I only let the machine run for 10 minutes before turning it off.  It was pretty firm, and it was starting to sound like the machine was working harder than it has before.  The mixture was pretty thick going in though, so I expected it to go faster than the milk based ice cream.

Last time I made ice cream, the freezer container was completely liquid by the time I turned off the machine.  This time, it was still mostly frozen.  In fact, when I went to wash out the second freezer container, the water froze to the inside.  I had to wait a little bit to make it easer to wash out.

For the cheesecake ice cream I followed what was in the book.  For the peanut butter though I experimented.  For one, I didn't have any heavy cream.  Second, I didn't have enough dairy milk either.  So I made some changes, using up the rest of the whole milk I had on hand, and finishing off the recipe with soymilk.  Soymilk is good; it doesn't give Doug a bellyache.  The sugar was too much, and I would have enjoyed more peanut butter.  Changes for next time.  And now that I know the basic proportions, I'll take more liberties with "following" recipes.