Ice cream is a delicious treat, especially on a hot summer day! But where does this awesome, icy dessert come from??!
At it’s most basic, ice cream is actually a pretty simple food -- it’s made up of mostly just milk or cream, sugar, flavoring, and air! Making it involves mixing together the right amount of each ingredient and then freezing it using a special machine or a technique that churns the ingredients at the same time as it’s being frozen, so that air gets stirred in and the mixture doesn’t end up like a hard frozen block. (To make ice cream fluffy and soft, up to 50% of its volume can be air!)
Have you ever heard the rumor that ice cream is made with seaweed? Believe it or not, this claim is partially true! – Some types of ice cream use carrageenan, a special type of gum made from seaweed which helps ice cream to stay smooth and fluffy!
We all scream for ice cream!
In just a couple of minutes, you can make your very own ice cream, right at home!
Have a grown-up help you gather together the following things:
For the ice cream, you’ll need 1 tablespoon sugar, ½ cup cream or half and half, and ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract.
For your special home-made ice-cream-maker, you’ll need a gallon sized Ziploc bag, a pint-sized Ziploc bag, about 3 cups of ice, and 1/3 cup rock or kosher salt.
First, mix together the sugar, half and half or cream, and vanilla extract. Pour these mixed ingredients into the smaller Ziploc bag, and seal it tightly. Next, fill the gallon-size bag with the ice and the salt. Drop the sealed smaller bag into the larger bag, and bury it down into the ice. Seal the larger bag.
Using some towels or gloves to prevent your hands from getting too cold, mix around the contents of the larger bag! You can shake the bag or roll it around on a countertop.
After about ten minutes of mixing, take the smaller bag out of the larger one -- inside of it, you should find some delicious home-made vanilla ice cream!! YUM!
