Project Homestead

(really) handmade ice cream

I've been known to eat a fair bit of ice cream. So much, in fact, I was shocked to realize sometime in high school that a pint of coffee Häagen-Dazs was not created solely for me, to finish in one sitting. After all, it took a while for the solid mass to soften just enough that a spoon could slide into the creamy moat growing around the frozen edge. And by then, the container was nearly empty anyway...

This admission explains why I consider it my duty to help replenish the world's ice cream supply. And once Owen and I made this delicious, beautifully simple, vanilla version in 30 minutes, with nothing more than Ball jars, ice cubes, pickling salt, and a few stirs, I was convinced I could do it over and over again.

We got the idea from the brilliant River Cottage Family Cookbook (the recipe is below, with a few tiny tweaks). I recommend the book for anyone who likes to cook real, whole food and understand how fresh ingredients work together. It's instructive without being overly simple or, worse, condescending. And if you have kids, it's a no-brainer. Wander over to your local library and borrow it, or buy it at once.

This recipe is so fun because it's human powered and requires no cooking (that's a bonus on hot day). It's also a great excuse to use fresh cream skimmed from my friends' raw whole milk, good sugar and today's ripe berries. Then there's the chemistry: Ice isn't cold enough, long enough, to freeze cream solid. Toss in some salt, though, and voila! (By the ocean, we know firsthand that while fresh water freezes at 32 degrees F, saltwater freezes at much lower temperatures. So, by adding salt, the temperature of the ice drops quickly—and is happy to freeze jars of cream and sugar while it's at it.)

To get going, here's all you'll need:

• 2-3 Tbsp. well-chilled heavy cream (we used 4 or so Tbsp. with fine results)
• Flavoring, such as vanilla extract, 2 or 3 strawberries, 2 tsp. of your fave jam, a little melted chocolate
• 2 tsp. confectioner's sugar
• Clean half-pint Ball jar with lid, 5 cups ice cubes straight from the freezer, 1 cup of salt (we used plain, cheap pickling salt), and a heavy metal pan (we used an enameled cast iron stock pot) with a lid.

What you do:

1. Spoon the cream into the clean jar. Add your favorite flavoring: For vanilla ice cream, add a few drops of the vanilla extract; for strawberries, crush them until they're runny and stir them in, or mix in 2 tsp. of good jam; for chocolate, stir in melted chocolate. Add the sugar.

2. Screw the lid tightly. Place the jar in the fridge while you sort out the ice and salt.

3. Get the ice from the freezer. The ice should be as cold as possible. If that sounds a bit silly, remember that the temperature of ice can vary a lot. Straight from the freezer, it could be as low as 14 degrees F. Ice that's been sitting around in a bowl and is just beginning to melt will be only 30 or 28 degrees F. Put the ice and salt into the container and mix them together well. The temperature of the ice will fall rapidly.

4. Make a well in the ice mixture. Take the jam jar out of the fridge and stand it in the well. Put the lid on the container and let it stand somewhere cool. (I put our pot back in the freezer.)

5. After 10 minutes, take off both lids and carefully stir the cream mixture, making sure you don't get any of the salt in it. It will have turned very cold but it won't have started to freeze yet. Replace the lids. Repeat this stirring process at 10-minute intervals until the cream turns to ice cream. It will do this quite suddenly, so be ready.

6. This makes a small amount of ice cream, just right for a single cone or to sandwich between a couple of wafers. You could use a bigger pan and add more jam jars. Just keep the proportions of ice to salt the same. (Note: We made eight jars' worth in two pans, and I plan to experiment to see how full we can make each jar. See full explanation of my weakness above...)

Enjoy.

the sap runneth over

Thanks to warming days and still-cool nights, the sugar maples are pumping in these here hills. All over Maine, craggy old trees are wearing silver necklaces of galvanized steel buckets, ready to catch whatever the trees will give them. 

Every time I pour some Grade A Medium Amber all over my plain yogurt or blueberry pancakes or vanilla ice cream (try it, you won't look back), I realize that I could nearly live on this earthy-sweet nectar of the gods. And I'd better get tapping to make some of my own.

It's simple alchemy, according to the kind Cooperative Extension folks at the University of Maine: In late summer and fall, maple trees stop growing and store excess starches in their sapwood. It stays put as long as the temperature in the wood remains below about 40 degrees F. Whenever the wood warms up, the starches miraculously convert to sugars, which flow into the tree sap. It's finite, though. When temps reach about 45 degrees, the conversion stops—and so does the sugar. 

Moved along by alternating spells of warm and cold, the sap pours from the tree into our waiting pails. Each tap hole, like this one, can yield anywhere from five to 15 gallons. But it takes about 10 gallons of sap to produce one quart of syrup. The time-consuming part of the operation is the boiling—the sap is mostly water, so it bubbles it until you're left with 66 to 67 percent sugar content at about 7 degrees F above the boiling point of water (here at the water's edge, that's 212 degrees F). 

I found a great home sugaring primer that lists a slew of resources and supplies, not the least of which is Lehman's, which I love. I'm pining for a hobby-sized maple syrup evaporator, essentially a wood stove beneath a large, shallow pan. The Half Pint Evaporator should do just fine...

Until then, I've been plowing through fresh syrup with this wonderful recipe. These cookies are both yummy and healthy, so I eat them with abandon. Try them with vanilla ice cream ... drizzled with a bit more syrup, of course.

Maple oatmeal raisin cookies

2 sticks butter, softened

1 cup Maine maple syrup

2 eggs

1 tsp. Maple extract

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. Baking soda

1 tsp. Salt

3 cups rolled oats

1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 375. Beat the butter and maple syrup together until well blended. Beat in eggs and maple extract. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt and sift together. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter maple mixture and mix well. Stir in raisins. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake for 12-14 minutes. Cool for two minutes before removing to wire racks. Store in a tightly covered container (if you can).

ah, applesauce

The apples we'd picked from our old trees were starting to soften in the fridge (apparently they're not great keepers). Given my irrational fear of pie crusts, I opted to make applesauce with Caleb the other morning. Natural applesauce is as uncomplicated as it gets, of course, but it's even MORE FUN when using the world's most charming apple prep tool ever invented. LL Bean calls it the apple-peeling gizmo. 

And, as you can see from these pictures, it doesn't just peel. It slices and cores them apples, while you're at it. The result: a never-ending ribbon of peel, great, uniform slices (unless your apples are lumpy, like mine, which can derail them), and happy, happy helpers.