Sunday, August 06, 2006

Ice cream

Liam had school three days last week and Madeline and I participated on the final one, it's the end of summer school so it was a party week. The pool party from tuesday got posponed due to inclement weather so thursday, when we were there was pool and ice cream party.

Making the ice cream was the activity that I and the other participating parent were involved in. Lynn (one of the teachers) gave us a list of purchases to bring with us I had 4 quarts half and half, vanilla and cones, the other list was rock salt, crushed ice and sprinkles ( there was already sugar at school).

The plan was that you have small empty cans (like tuna or slamon cans) in the freezer and you put 1 part rock salt and 4 parts crushed ice into a container, about an inch bigger than the can all round, and into the can you put 1/4 cup half and half 2 t sugar and a 1/4 teaspoon vanilla and stir. After about 5 -6 minutes you should get ice cream.
One of the dad's who was there (like many of the parents) works at Los Alamos he said they super cooled water in class using rock salt, ice and acohol so the theory should work. Our problems were, most of the kids wanted to mix all the ingredients in one container, they wanted to eat the ingredients, they lost patience with the stirring.

We did have one girl who stirred and stirred but the containers we had the ice and rock salt in were to small and there wasn't enough ice up the sides of the cans. I tried one later in a larger container of ice and after initally thinking the whole thing was a faf I left it on the table and came back to ice cream. We had a plan B anyway which was fold frozen raspberries into whipped cream fold and fold its just like ice cream and was defineately popular for snack. (plan C stayed in the freezer)

5 comments:

Ruth said...

Do you think you could do many cans in one big bowl of ice? What is half 'n half?

Christine said...

yes, a question used to ask often when using American recipes. It's half milk, half cream, I suspect in NZ you could happily use full cream milk, add some extra cream if you REALLY want to, but I'd not bother.

M + J said...

You can buy a camp ice cream maker which uses the same theory. We got one into Biv thinking we could kick it around like a soccar ball to make it mix, but it was brittle plastic and wouldn't cope with that. They sell though, about $50 from memory, so not that cheap

Mere

Anonymous said...

We did this at Playcentre in Wellington - but with big and small ziplock bags instead of tins - and shaking instead of stirrring - the problem we had was cold hands and as you found too, the kids attention span ending before it froze.
Also saw it done at a playcentre workshop with ziplock bag inside bigger (formula tin size) container of ice and salt and tin placed on side and rolled back and forth for ages.
Great to read you are meeting some new friends!
Anthea

Susan Harper said...

We also did it at playcentre: we have little tins inside big tins and roll the big tins around. If too cold can use things to push them with that aren't flesh. It takes a while though and many children lose interest.