Terry: Hand cranking ice cream good fun

We didn’t need a recipe; both of us had done it often enough that the basic mixture for ice cream was locked into our brains.

Half dozen eggs, two cups of sugar a pint of cream, a couple teaspoons of vanilla and whatever flavoring you want. Finish it off with whole milk to the freezer cylinder fill line. Then all you have to do is layer the ice and rock salt right for creamy, frozen goodness.

linkMom ran into me in the grocery store and told me to make a freezer of ice cream for the gathering and she would make one herself. I agreed and began going over what I needed in my head but before I had picked up any of the ingredients mom wheeled her grocery cart by me again and told me she had all of my ingredients just bring my freezer and make it at her house.

Our only point of contention was over the flavors, I was going to make vanilla and she said, “No she was making Butterfinger and we needed Chocolate, too, because we never made vanilla.”

It was true that there is a family history with chocolate. As a youngster my dad had spent his “cream money” on an extra freezer for the family so they could have chocolate every time they made ice cream. We usually had chocolate when I was growing up, too.

After I moved away and only got home occasionally during the summer, I discovered the joy of vanilla with lots of toppings to fix things like you want right in your bowl.

I’ve experimented with all sorts of recipes and methods for making ice cream. We’ve had a couple of pots you could put in the freezer then take them out and fill with ice cream makings and turn a little crank for ice cream. I’ve made it in the blender and deep freeze. I’ve had a little device that you simply rolled around to freeze the cream. But nothing is as good as the old-fashioned wood tub with a crank and dasher.

Nancy Johnson did mankind a huge favor when she patented that first ice cream freezer in 1843. It would be hard to count the number of freezers I’ve turned myself let alone the rest of mankind.

Years ago we all got away from the hand-cranked ice cream freezers and went to electric ones. Both ways are noisy. In the electric version you have to listen to a motor whine. In the hand cranked version you had the sound of the tub turning inside the ice and salt and the sounds of kids laughing and joking as one sat on the freezer while the others took turns cranking. Come to thank of it, that hand cranking was a lot of fun.

So, we had Butterfinger and chocolate last weekend. We did it in electric freezers, but making it with my mother made it special even if there was no vanilla.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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