Here's a wonderful video from YouTuber Guava Juice on French Vanilla Ice Cream made using Milk and Vanilla Extract and kicking a ball around for a while. There are quite a few different brands of ice cream making balls and they're pretty much all based on the same concept- You pour water around the walls of a hollow ball and stick it in your freezer overnight, next you add your ice cream ingredients as you'd use to make regular ice cream and add rock salt to the OUTSIDE chamber which helps the ice and water become even colder. Then all you need to do is transfer the heat from the outside to the inside where all your ingredients are by waiting, and kicking the ball around just speeds up the process! They're a great fun activity and yes, they're limited and not as great as properly made freezer ice cream, but they're a great fun novelty and still get good results.

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Sugar free and diabetic friendly ice creams - Home made

Being a Type 1 diabetic, I often try to make my own sugar-free or low-sugar versions of store bought stuff, and ice-cream is no exception. There are a number of diabetic ice-creams already available in the shops and some of them like Frank's are pretty damn good, but many are still very high sugar (see: Frank's) or use things like Sorbitol as a sweetener which is a heavy laxative, or even worse just plain taste awful. As with most things, home-made is always better unless you're paying through the nose, so here are some sensible tips and things you can do to make your own low sugar and diabetic friendly icecreams.

1. Sweetener Choice

As mentioned, Sorbitol is an infamous laxative in large amounts and since Ice Cream requires a lot of sweetness to offset numbing from the lower temperature, it's just a horrible choice which should be avoided whenever possible. The reason so many companies tend to use it is because it tastes somewhat similar to sugar and is very cheap, none of which stops it from being a poor choice. Stevia is a great natural option which, although fairly expensive, is zero-carbs, great for diabetics. The only issue with Stevia is that it's not as strong as sugar-alcohol sweeteners and may require large amounts. Erythitol is a fantastic tasting sweetener and some even prefer it to sugar. It also works wonderfully in ice creams and is fine in any quantity. It's a little more expensive but it's one of the best options and can be substituted 1:1 for sugar in any recipe. Xylitol is also fairly close to sugar and cheaper than Erythitol, it's also actually good for your teeth! However it's a little gritty and usually large grain for ice cream, so use a mortar and pestle or whizz it in a blender first. Also note that it has 40g of carbs per 100g so may not be suitable for large quantities or if you're diabetic. Here's a sugar free ice cream recipe.

No Sugar Nutty Mint Ice Cream

INGREDIENTS 2 cups double/heavy cream ¼ cup unsweetened nut milk (Almond, cashew, even soya will work great) 4 egg yolks 2 Tbsp Peppermint essence or flavor 2 finely diced mint leaves or 1 tsp mint powder 2 tsp Stevia Combine your nut milk and heavy cream in a good sized bowl and microwave for 2 minutes. Mix all other ingredients in another bowl then add fold in the heated milk-cream and stir until combined then stick back in the microwave for another minute and every 30 seconds after, stopping and stirring every time. If you don't take your time your eggs will scramble. You can also do this on the stove top if you don't trust the microwave, but be equally careful about keeping a low temperature for your eggs. Next, strain everything into a chilled bowl to remove any lumps and chill overnight in the fridge, or pop in the freezer for 20 minutes until cold. Add to your ice cream maker and then eat soft or freeze until even firmer.

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Rice Pudding Ice-Cream? Here's how!

The best thing about ice cream is how simple it is to make, and rice pudding is even easier. So combine the two and you can make rice-pudding ice cream really quick. To make your ice cream with rice pudding you can use literally any white rice you like, short grains are best- Aborio/Paela rices and even Jasmine work well. Alternatively you can just use a tin of rice pudding bought at any store to save even more time, skip ahead to the last step if you do! Take 100g of your chosen rice with 500ml of milk (whole milk works best) in a pan over a medium heat. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar and scrape and add 1 vanilla pod or add whatever other flavouring you like. Combine and stir until the milk has been absorbed by the rice then turn off the heat and transfer to a plate or large bowl to cool. Use a potato masher or large wooden spoon to break and mush up the rice to the desired consistency (I like mine thick & chunky). Finally, lightly whip and add 500ml of double cream and mix evenly, then transfer everything to your freezer for just 4 hours. This stuff is thick & creamy and takes less effort than regular ice cream. Serve it with some strawberries, raspberries or blueberries for sharpness against your creamy luxurious vanilla rice pudding ice cream and you're good to serve!

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How to make Ice Cream Sandwhiches

In my searches on the web I've been finding more and more weird Ice Cream recipes recently. First fried ice cream, now the ice cream sandwhich. So first I'll explain just what the heck an ice cream sandwhich is, and then I'll show you how to make ice cream sandwhiches.

An Ice cream sandwich is rather deceptive because it's called a sandwhich, looks like a biscuit, and is actually a cake! It's a sort of hand-held light cake. It has a big slice of vanilla (or whatever flavor your like) ice cream between two slices of soft wafer and usually the wafer section is chocolate flavor.

Wikipedia says that the Ice Cream Sandwhich was made in New York around 1900. That goes hand in hand with the history of ice cream, much of which originated in that area. In Ireland and Scotland (where I hail from!) the ice cream sandwhich is known as a 'slider'. The wafer has been a popular alternative to the cone throughout history and if you think about it is really just a simpler version of the cone, enabling you to eat ice cream without getting too messy.

Anyway, now that you know just what it is, let's move on to how to make an ice cream sandwhich!

First off you need arout 2lbs of Ice Cream - If you don't know how to make ice cream yet, see some of our other tutorials.
Next you can simply sandwhich these between two store bought wafers- but that's horribly boring. Instead I suggest mixing nuts of your choice through the ice cream then making some chocolate brownies, rice crispie cakes or macaroon to replace your wafers. Anything that tastes good and is solid enough to hold the ice cream will do. You can be incredibly creative while learning how to make ice cream sandwhiches!

For extra flare you can use a cookie cutter to cut your ice cream sandwhiches into cute shapes. Here's an idea Valentines day raspberry ripple ice cream heart-shaped ice cream sandwhiches.

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How to make ice cream - Vanilla Flavor

Browsing around the net the other day I came across this recipe for how to make Vanilla ice cream. It's made with real vanilla so it's the genuine stuff.

Ingredients:

• 4 egg yolks
  
• 1/2 pint (250ml) milk
  
• 1/2 pint (250ml) double/heavy cream
  
• 4 oz (100g) sugar or caster sugar
  
• 1 vanilla pod sliced down the middle (so you can see the seeds)
  

Pour the milk into a saucepan and bring the pan slowly up to boiling point. Place the vanilla pod into it and leave to infuse for about 20 minutes.

In a bowl, beat and mix together the egg yolks and sugar until thick. Carefully remove the vanilla pod from the pan of milk and scrape out the seeds into the milk. Pour the milk into the mixture of egg yolks and sugar whilst stirring.

Pour the mixture back into the pan and heat gently, stirring until the custard thickens - DO NOT BRING TO THE BOIL OR IT WILL PROBABLY CURDLE. When you can see a film form over the back of your spoon it's time to remove the saucepan from the heat. Leave to cool.

When the custard base is cold stir in the cream.

You're done! You can now transfer the whole mix to your ice cream maker or to plastic bags for the freezer, depending on which method you use.

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How to make ice cream: Watermelon style!

This is a really neat and VERY simple trick I picked up on the internet somewhere a few days ago. Here's how to make ice cream shaped like watermelon slices.

Ingredients
Chocolate chips - These will be the "seeds"
Raspberry Sherbet and Lime Sherbet, preferably softened. These will be your Colors for the outside.
You can use cherry or strawberry, or other flavors, as long as it's red and green.

How to make the ice cream
Get a BIG mixing bowl and put in a layer of the Lime Sherbet. Mix the chocolate chips with the raspberry sherbet then use it to fill up the rest of the bowl. Then stick it in the freezer to refreeze.

Once it's ready take it out and turn upside down onto a large plate or board and ease it out (Tip: Use a warm towel on the bottom of the bowl to help the ice cream slide out). Slice it up into several pieces or "Watermelon slices". That's it! Great party piece and it tastes awesome.

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How to make ice cream softer

How to make ice cream softer is a bit of a problem since usually when you make homemade ice cream it will come out hard and crystalized. Crystals are caused when the water in the ice cream is allowed to warm up (even slighty) and then refreeze. If, during the process of making your ice cream, you don't shake it enough, it'll for crystals. This will make the ice cream have a hard, grainy texture and will also detract from the taste slightly too. You can duplicate this by taking a scoop of ice cream out of the freezer into a bowl, let it melt, then pop it back. Take it out again and you'll see that most of the water has seperated from the fat and as such there are large ice crystals.

So, how to make ice cream softer? Luckily there are a number of methods and they're all pretty simple and straight forward. Here are just a few.

1. Replace the sugar.
Sugar doesn't freeze and as such it's important to get the quantity correct. Replacing the sugar in your recipe with honey or corn syrup will produce a softer, creamier ice cream.

2. Fat & Gelatin.
You can add gelatin (available from most supermarkets) to your recipe to produce smoother ice cream.
You can also up the amount of fat in your recipe by adding egg yolks, substituting cream for whole fat milk, etc.

3. Add alcohol.
While I personally don't like adding alcohol to my foods, even just a couple of tablespoons of a high proof alcohol can help your ice cream become much smoother. The reason, again, is that alcohol doesn't freeze (put some whisky in the freezer and you'll see).

4. Freezing the ice cream at a higher temperature will also help you make smoother ice cream. If you don't want to adjust the dial on your freezer, store it nearer the door (warmest part of your freezer).

How to make ice cream just right is a bit of a balancing act but by trying out a few of these different techniques you can get excellent results.

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