What's a better way??!
What's a better way??
I made homemade ice cream with out any type of machine. I just put the ingredients together, then put it in a bowl and froze it. But I used fat free cream and fat free condensed milk (as an experiement). And I made two kinds:
Peppermint and vanilla with chocolate chips. I put dye in both. And I let each of them sit in the freezer over night because they didn't freeze in the time span the recipe said it would.
Anyway, they turned out to melt really fast. And they didn't really feeze the entire way that ice cream is supposed to. The one that froze properly (but still melted really fast) was the vanilla with chocolate chips (colored green). What happened? Was it the ingredients, the coloring, or what??
Answers:
Ok, two things here. You can make the ice-cream with the fat-free alternatives, but because they have a much higher water content than fat content, they freeze differently and have much bigger crystals. Because they simply freeze like water, they will also melt like ice.
Secondly, The reason ice-cream has that lovely smooth texture, is because a machine continuously beats the mixture as it freezes. This breaks down the ice crystals as they form, and makes it soft to scoop. Without a machine, you need to freeze your mixture in a flat, shallow container (so that it freezes more quickly and more evenly) for a few hours at a time, so that you can take the container out and beat it (stir it hard) with a wooden spoon.The mixture should be slushy, not super hard. This method will work as well as a machine, but you need to keep checking on your mixture every few hours, depending on how fast your freezer works.
I don't think the colourings or chocolate chips will make much difference, unless you used a pint of colouring! I use an ice-cream machine which has a pre-freezable bowl, and an electric paddle that keeps churning the mixture while it freezes. It makes lovely soft ice-cream, but if I put it in the freezer to store, I do have to soften it a little in the fridge for maybe 20 minutes before serving, as it's inclined to be harder than shop-bought ice-cream. I use fat-free yoghurt and fresh fruit - try it again, but stir it hard every hour or 2. Good luck!!