Homemade Ice Cream In A Bag

Here's a recipe for some cool summer fun!

We tried this on the 4th of July before our picnic with Craig's family.

I googled directions for "homemade ice cream in a bag" and came up with a couple (slightly different) handy recipes.

Before the kids woke up from nap, I prepped ingredients as pictured above: with the salt already measured for them to dump in the gallon bag along with the ice and with sugar and vanilla awaiting the addition of milk in the sandwich bags.

I had Craig look for "ice cream salt" at the store a couple weeks ago and he couldn't find it, but I found it plain as day on the bottom shelf below the spices at Meijer when I went.

The gallon bag is filled with some ice and then the kids dump the salt in with it.
I added milk to the sandwich baggies and sealed them shut removing as much air as possible. Then the kids placed the sandwich bags inside the gallon bags with the ice and salt surrounding them and we sealed the gallon bag shut too.

Shake, shake shake!!!

More shaking and jostling.

Once the milk begins to harden (you can see it, although we could have waited a little longer) you remove the sandwich bag, rinse the salt/ice off the outside of it using cold water, grab a spoon and EAT!

Here's the recipe I used per bag:

(combined from this link where the mom demonstrates on the you tube video and the workitmom.com recipe written just above the video)

In the sandwich bag:

1 cup whole milk

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp sugar

In the gallon bag:

4 cups ice

4 tablespoons rock salt

What I would have done differently: fill the gallon bag HALF FULL with ice as the you tube mom said and used the 6 tbsp rock salt like she did. I think that would help it harden faster/better.

We're going to try it again with some of the suggested add-ins from "workitmom": mini chocolate chips, drizzled in peanut butter, cocoa powder.

Or maybe we'll just add some of the gazillion berries we've been working with for the last week. ;)