Chocolate Ice Cream

I made chocolate ice cream one day last week, so I pulled up this old post. Sorry about the awful pictures...I didn't get new ones last week. You get the idea!

Other than last week, I don't remember the last time I made homemade ice cream. Our milk situation isn't quite the same as it used to be, and we usually don't have a lot of extra.

Here we go! This is my first batch of ice cream of the year! We wanted chocolate, so let’s do it!

2 cups of sugar… We are, regrettably, out of the cane sugar that we always use. I am thus reduced to using ordinary white sugar… (I used cane last week)

1 cup of cocoa!

1 Teaspoon of vanilla (or however much you want…like I do here!)

Mix well…

No..I said “mix well!” There…that’s better!

Now, we need 5 cups of milk. Start by adding about 1/2 cup to the dry mix, so that you can mix it smoothly. If you add all the milk at once, the cocoa won’t mix in smoothly, and you’ll have dry clumps of cocoa in your ice cream.

And a little more milk (still pouring from the 5 cups…just a little at a time)

NO!!! We’re out of milk! :(

Ha! Until we go out to the fridge on the porch and get some more… (this picture made me seriously depressed!)

That may be enough. Oh, and that’s Mom’s granola on the middle shelf!
Ok, now we need 3 cups of cream!

I’ll put in the 3 cups of cream, and then add either cream or milk to make the canister 3/4 full.

And that’s it! Now you can fuss with the ice cream freezer that doesn’t want to work right, after 4 months of dormancy. You know, a hypothetical situation. Or not…

Freeze until it’s done!

Yummy! (I wouldn’t know, it’s not like I tried it or anything. The very idea!!! :) )

I transfer it to a bucket and put it in the freezer for a while. Dad likes his ice cream insanely hard, so he doesn’t like it straight out of the ice cream freezer.

Ok, if you need to make sure you’ve got everything, here’s the recipe again…

2 cups sugar
1 cup cocoa
1 tsp vanilla
5 cups milk
3 cups cream

Enjoy!

Chocolate No-Bake Cookies

Rylie and I made a cookie! These are Chocolate No-Bake Cookies, and are a favorite around our house. We like them so much, I'm really surprised that I never posted a tutorial on them before. But I checked, and somehow I made it through 300 posts on Kayla's Conversations without ever writing about these cookies. I guess it'll be a while before I run out of blog material. :)

Start out with 2 cups of sugar in a medium size saucepan...

1/4 cup of cocoa. I'm a dark chocolate kind of girl, so I heap all chocolate and cocoa. I'm still trying to figure out why I heap things that aren't related to chocolate...

1/2 a cup of milk or cream. A lil' cream never hurt nobody. :)

1/2 a cup of butter...

Mix all of that up and work on bringing it to a boil, i.e. turn it on.

While it's heating, I prep the rest of the ingredients so they're ready when I need them. I add a pinch of salt to 3 cups of oats...

The sugary chocolatey yumminess...

The rest of the ingredients waiting patiently for their turn. 3 cups of oats with a pinch of salt, vanilla (no, I'm not adding all of that) and 1/2 a cup of peanut butter. I only had creamy peanut butter, but chunky would be better.

When the sugary chocolatey yumminess comes to a boil...

Remove it from the heat... (by the way, I traded in my whisk for a spoon. Adding oats with the whisk is liable to make even a good Baptist lose her religion.)

Now, vanilla. I let Rylie add the vanilla, and it happened rather quickly. So quickly and suddenly that I didn't even get the camera focused. And she got my generous nature when measuring!!! We all had a "what just happened" expression, including Rylie!

Then add the 1/2 cup of peanut butter...

And stir that in...

Add the 3 cups of oats...

And add the ones from the counter, too...

And stir it up...

Now Rylie's mom was here to pick her up, but before she left, Rylie said "I stir it!" So she did...

Now drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper...I used my cookie scoop, which is 2 tablespoons, but you can use a regular spoon, or whatever you want. :)

Now let them sit until they're set enough to eat. Mine never did get hard today and we're blaming it on the humidity. No big deal...

I'm sure you'll love these! They are rather sweet and are best eaten with whole, raw milk. :D

But what isn't?

Printable recipe