Who doesn’t like ice cream?! Here is an awesome recipe for making homemade ice cream without any fancy machines or ingredients. With just a few common ingredients, a little time, and some energetic kids, you can whip up this yummy snack in your own home. And as a bonus, it might tire the kids out for you! You can even turn this into an educational activity by utilizing the questions listed after the recipe!
Plastic Bag Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup half and half
- 1 Tbsp. white sugar (or more if you want it sweeter!)
- 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 cups ice
- 1 Tbsp. salt
- 2 sandwich-sized plastic bags
- 1 gallon-sized plastic bag
Instructions
- Prop a sandwich bag up inside a measuring cup or mug.
- Add milk, half and half, sugar, and vanilla extract into sandwich bag and close it.
- Put this sandwich bag inside the other sandwich bag and close it as well.
- Put ice and salt into the gallon bag.
- Place the sandwich bags inside the gallon bag and close it up.
- Shake, shake, and shake some more until the ice cream mixture hardens!
- Add your favourite toppings and enjoy! Some ideas are chocolate sauce, nuts, crushed up chocolate bars, and caramel.
Notes
- Wearing mittens while shaking is suggested! That ice is cold on the hands.
- Put some music on and make it a fun homemade ice cream shaking party! Dance and shake!
- If younger children can’t get it shaken enough to harden or it is just not getting to the right consistency, you can put it in the freezer for a bit.
If you want to add an educational aspect, here are a few suggested questions you could ask:
- What made the ice melt in the bag? OR Why was the salt necessary in the large bag?
- What does salt do to ice?
- What made the milk and half-and-half so cold?
- How did we make the ice cream sweet?
- How could we make it sweeter?
- Why did we have to shake it up?
- What did you like about your homemade ice cream? What would you like to do differently next time to improve the flavour?
While enjoying your delicious snack, you could also read an ingredient list for store bought ice cream and compare it to the number and type of ingredients that are in your homemade ice cream. This can lead to a discussion on how homemade things can be better for us than store bought and an awareness of ingredients.
Check out this article on How Stuff Works to see how the salt melts the ice and some other times it is useful for salt to melt ice.
This article has been written by homeschooling staff writers of The Canadian Schoolhouse (TCS). Enjoy more of our content from TCS contributors and staff writers by visiting our Front Door page that has content on our monthly theme and links to all our content sections.
"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).