Ice Cream Explorers

Every August for the past 5 years, we have gathered a group of kids and adults on the lawn and made hand cranked homemade ice cream. Over those years, we have made vanilla with toppings, different flavors like peach, strawberry, and blackberry, plus add-ins like chocolate chips, nuts, and candies.

This is my most requested workshop, if you can even call it a workshop. It’s so much fun!

Gather the kids and a hand-crank ice cream maker (borrow one if you have to), and settle in for story time. By the end of this workshop, every ice cream explorer will get to try a bowl of ice cream they helped make themselves, play some fun games, design an ice cream truck all their own, and grab a recipe to take home to make their own homemade treat. (Downloads below)

This workshop isn’t just about making ice cream, it’s about trying something families have been doing together for a couple hundred years, long before there were ice cream freezers to buy it from a store.

By the time we’re done, you’ll know how to make ice cream the old-fashioned way, like they did in the 1800’s, and you’ll understand why it works. Let’s get started.

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Start by gathering everyone and asking the question that everyone has an answer for: “What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? What about toppings?”

Mine’s Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip, if anyone asks.

Read If I Drove an Ice Cream Truck by the Cat in the Hat the story of a cat with some pretty unusual ideas about ice cream. As you read, ask the kids to imagine:

• “If you had your own ice cream truck, what would it be like?”

• “What treats would your truck sell? What would it look like?”

Hold onto those answers, because they’ll get to draw them out at the end of the workshop.

Before we mix anything, let’s take a look at the ice cream machine and all of its parts. This will help you understand what’s happening inside while you’re cranking.

• The bucket - holds the ice, salt, and water all around the canister

• The canister and lid - this is where your ice cream mixture actually goes to freeze

• The dasher - the part inside the canister with wooden scrapers that scrape frozen ice cream off the sides as you crank and helps your ice cream get well mixed

• The hand crank and gear box - this turns your arm’s motion into the spinning motion using gears to make it all work

Now that you know what’s inside, let’s fill it up.

Half and Half, sugar, salt, and vanilla. Just four simple ingredients.

This recipe makes enough for one standard hand-crank machine. It has easy ingredients that you can double or halve, depending on your freezer.

• ½ gallon half and half (2 quarts)

• 2 cups pure cane sugar

• ½ teaspoon sea salt

• 1–2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

Assign jobs - pouring half and half, adding sugar, salt, and vanilla, layering ice and salt, taking turns at the crank, etc.

If you would like little hands to shake the ice cream mixture in quart jars. Double this recipe —> Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream Base one recipe per quart jar or Follow the instructions below.

Before you add the ice and salt, here are some questions to ask:

• Which do you think does the real work of freezing your ice cream? The ice or the salt?

• Why do you think plain ice by itself isn’t cold enough to freeze the ice cream?

• How many turns of the crank do you think it will take before it gets hard to turn?

Share your guesses out loud or write them down and we’ll find out who was closest at the end.

A few cranking challenges to pass the time:

• “Can you crank with your tongue out?”

• “Can you crank like you’re riding a roller coaster?”

• “Who can crank with the most serious face?”

1. Whisk together the ingredients until the sugar is mostly dissolved.

2. Pour the mixture into the canister of your hand-crank ice cream maker, filling no more than ⅔ full — the ice cream needs room to expand and won’t freeze properly if it’s too full.

3. Secure the lid on top of the canister and place the canister with ice cream mixture into the bucket so that the dent in the bottom of the canister rests on top of the nub in the bottom of the bucket.

4. Then set the crank in place on top of the bucket and secure with the latch.

5. Layer the ice and salt around the canister: pack about 4 inches of ice around the sides, then sprinkle a cup of rock salt evenly over it. Repeat with another 4 inches of ice and another cup of salt, staying below the top of the canister.

6. Pour 2 cups of cold salt water over the ice and salt mixture, then start cranking!

7. Follow your machine’s manufacturer directions for churning time. Crank slowly at first, then faster as it firms up. This helps make the finished ice cream creamier.

8. I like it scooped fresh from the freezer, but for a firmer scoop, transfer the finished ice cream to a freezer-safe container, seal, and freeze for 1–3 hours before serving.

9. Top with your favorite toppings, grab a spoon, and dig in.

Here’s something worth noticing while you’re cranking.

At first, it’s easy, almost too easy. That’s because the mixture is still liquid.

After a while, the crank gets a little tougher to turn. That’s tiny ice crystals starting to form.

Eventually, the crank becomes noticeably harder. That means your ice cream is close to being ready.

While everyone waits for the ice cream to freeze, here’s something worth knowing: real ice cream is made of five things working together.

• Ice Crystals: frozen water that gives ice cream its “ice”

• Fat: from the cream, makes it rich and smooth

• Sweeteners: like sugar that makes it sweet and keeps it soft and scoopable

• Air: gets worked in as we crank, giving it a lighter texture instead of being more solid

• Other Solids: things like cookie crumbles, chocolate chips, or candy bits that add flavor and texture

(Would you like more detailed science of why salt and ice makes ice cream freeze? I cover that in a separate post, Ice Cream Science).

“Let’s see how much you know about ice cream. I’ll read a statement, and you decide if it’s fact or fiction.”

Fact = 👍 True Fiction = 👎 False

Kids vote with thumbs up (fact) or thumbs down (fiction).

1. The biggest ice cream sundae ever made weighed more than a baby elephant. 👉 Fact. (The biggest sundae weighed over 24,000 pounds.)

2. There’s a flavor of ice cream made with garlic. 👉 Fact. (And some people actually like it.)

3. The fastest ice cream cone ever eaten was swallowed in 1 second. 👉 Fiction. (That would give you a serious brain freeze!)

4. The world’s most popular ice cream flavor is vanilla. 👉 Fact.

5. Brain freeze happens because your mouth gets too cold too quickly. 👉 Fact. (Brain freeze happens when something really cold touches the roof of your mouth. It causes your blood vessels to constrict, then rapidly expand.)

6. There’s a type of ice cream made with actual gold sprinkles. 👉 Fact. (And it’s very expensive.)

7. Ice cream will melt faster if you sing to it. 👉 Fiction.

8. Someone once made broccoli-flavored ice cream. 👉 Fact. (Gross! It didn’t sell very well.)

9. Ice cream melts slower if you eat it upside down. 👉 Fiction.

10. The first ice cream cone was made at a fair in 1904, when a waffle maker rolled up a waffle to hold ice cream. 👉 Fact.

11. Some people put hot sauce on ice cream. 👉 Fact.

12. Chocolate ice cream was invented before vanilla. 👉 Fact. (Chocolate ice cream showed up in Europe in 1692, before vanilla in the 1780s.)

13. Ice cream trucks play music when they run out of ice cream. 👉 Fiction. (They play music to let you know they’re nearby.)

14. The United States eats more ice cream than any other country. 👉 Fact.

15. There’s such a thing as spaghetti ice cream. 👉 Fact. (In Germany, “spaghettieis” is vanilla ice cream pressed through a ricer to look like a plate of noodles. Fun!)

16. The tallest ice cream cone ever stacked was taller than a giraffe. 👉 Fiction. (But it was over 9 feet tall.)

17. In Japan, you can buy squid-ink ice cream. 👉 Fact. (Look it up!)

18. People in Italy invented gelato, which is a creamier kind of ice cream. 👉 Fact. (And it’s so tasty)

19. There once was a ketchup-flavored ice cream. 👉 Fact. (Ketchup flavored ice cream was made in Canada as an experiment.)

20. Eating ice cream for breakfast can make you smarter. 👉 Fiction. (But it might make you happier.)

21. Astronauts eat freeze-dried ice cream in space. 👉 Fact. (Have you ever tried it?)

“Now let’s play Flavor Mash-Up. I’ll show you two flavors that might go together or might not. Give me a thumbs up if you’d try it and a thumbs down if it’s too strange for you.”

Sweet Combinations

• Chocolate and Gummy Worms

• Vanilla and Marshmallow Fluff

• Strawberry and Pickle

• Mint and Cotton Candy

• Caramel and Popcorn

• Banana and Peanut Butter

• Blueberry and Bubblegum

• Peach and Honeycomb

• Root Beer and Whipped Cream

• Watermelon and Sprinkles

Unusual Combinations

• Broccoli and Chocolate Chips

• Mustard and Vanilla

• Pickle Juice and Lemon Sorbet

• Pizza and Strawberry

• Ketchup and Mint

• Ranch Dressing and Cookies

• Mac & Cheese and Ice Cream

• Garlic and Blueberry

Farm & Nature Combinations

• Honey and Fresh Mint

• Goat Cheese and Peach

• Lavender and Lemon

• Edible Flowers and Vanilla

• Berry and Basil

• Apple and Cinnamon

• Maple Syrup and Walnut

Bonus Cards

• Mystery Scoop - let the group call out a flavor for this card

• Double Dare Sundae - pick two random cards and combine them

• No Way, Never - a flavor so unusual no one would eat it

Before you add toppings, try one bite of plain ice cream. What do you notice? Does it taste creamy? Can you taste the vanilla? Is it as good as ice cream from the store?

Hand out truck-design sheets.

“Remember that question from our ice cream truck story: If you had an ice cream truck, what would it look like? Now you get to design it. It can be as unusual as you want it to be. Maybe your truck flies, maybe it sings, or maybe it only sells pickle and strawberry sundaes, you get to decide.”

• Salt & Ice Melting Race - place an ice cube with a sprinkle of salt next to a plain cube; have kids guess and time which ice cub melts faster.

• The Smell Test - scent cups (vanilla, strawberry, mint) for kids to guess. I used extracts and candy flavors for this.

Warmly,

— Nelle, Mama’s Homestead

Rooted. Gathered. Passed Down.

Here's the full activity kit: Fact or Fiction cards, Flavor Mash-Up cards, a truck design sheet, the smell test, and salt race trackers, and a scavenger hunt, all ready to print.

Here are the Ice Cream Explorer Bingo -7 Cards, ready to print.

P.S. — If someone you love has been quietly longing for this kind of life, will you share this with her? Forward this email. Send her the link. Sometimes all a woman needs is for someone to say — there is a place for you here.

P.P.S. — Thank you for being here! We are just getting started. The best is ahead. Stay close.