Using Snow For Homemade Ice Cream

This February we received about 10 inches of snow over a few days.  We live in the Mountain State so we don't have to go far for a good sledding hill!  

Even though it's cocoa season, we couldn't resist bringing out the ice cream maker.  We haven't purchased ice cream in at least five years and find the store varieties way too sweet for our liking, not to mention all of the unnecessary additives our bodies don't need.  Snow is free and the best thing to use for keeping the cream cold while churning.  Our ice cream maker is an antique White Mountain hand crank churn we found at a flea market.   It is Made in the USA,  We have our churn sitting inside a 5 gallon pail because there is a crack on the bottom that leaks water.

After 30 minutes or so of churning the cream is starting to thicken. 

The key to using old churns is to submerse the entire bucket in water for at least 24 hours before using it so the wood slats swell and hold the ice water.  As you can see, even with a slight crack, the pail still holds the ice water pretty well.  It took five days for the pail to dry out again.

Yum...mint chocolate chip ice cream!  There are recipes using snow with the milk, but we prefer the recipe found on the back of the Morton Ice Cream Salt box.  We reduced the recipe by half with a few other slight variations:

 Recipe:

1 1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 T lemon juice

1/8 tsp. salt

3.5 cups heavy whipping cream (local Homestead Creamery brand)

 1 cup whole milk (Whole Creamline Milk Homestead Creamery brand) 

 1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 tsp. mint extract 

2 drops green food coloring

1.5 cups chopped chocolate chips (Ghirardelli Bittersweet chocolate). 

According to several websites, this White Mountain Ice Cream churn was made in 1923.  More than 90 years and the thing still works!  I can only imagine how many revolutions that handle has had in its life so far.