Vanilla Ice Cream

We love ice cream but hate the plastic or plasticized cardboard that commercial ice cream and chocolate syrup come in, so now we are making both ourselves! We did buy an ice cream maker (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006ONQOC/) and cringed at the styrofoam it was packed in, but it makes hundreds of gallons of ice cream 2 quarts at a time preventing hundreds of single use ice cream containers that are trash.

The recurring trash we currently are left with:

1. The plastic tops from the reusable Straus Family Creamery organic heavy cream and milk bottles we buy

2. Plastic cocoa powder pouches. Once 16 oz pouch is good for about a gallon of chocolate syrup

Everything else is reusable or recyclable:

The Straus Family Creamery bottles get returned to the store for reuse.

Recyclable vanilla extract container (we buy the quart size clear artificial vanilla - much cheaper than real and close enough in taste for our uses).

Recyclable sugar & salt paper packaging.

We bought a 2nd ice cream freezing container so we can make 2 batches of ice cream back to back and reuse our mixing bowl and utensils without washing them. This results in about 1 gallon (4 quarts) of ice cream.

Super Easy Vanilla Ice Cream

Ingredients:

2 cups (1 pint container) organic heavy cream

1 to 1.5 cups organic milk

2/3 cups organic granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or to taste)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Whisk or stir all ingredients together in mixing bowl until sugar is dissolved. (I pour the milk into the pint heavy cream container to wash it out a bit and to use that container as my measuring “cup” -- filling it about 1/2 to 3/4 full).

Pour into ice cream maker following its directions.

Let churn for ~20 minutes, will be soft serve consistency.

Transfer to reusable container. One batch almost fills two 1 quart plastic containers.

Store sealed in freezer. Use within a month or two.