Ice Cream Sandwiches

It's ice cream season! Hooray! I love making homemade ice cream.

Here's the summer treat I did yesterday for my kids to snack from in the freezer. My daughter is in some sort of growth spurt kids go through at around 8 years of age and she is hungry all the time. My son's medication makes him hungry only in the evenings and boy is he hungry in the evenings!



I've made ice cream sandwiches with homemade cookies but I found that they break apart too easily. These are Chips Ahoy and they are an excellent alternative. The ice cream is homemade. I tried a new recipe for the ice cream and I learned that I don't care for condensed milk in my vanilla ice cream... I prefer my regular recipe passed down in my family through Great Aunt Florence from Waterloo, Iowa. Waterloo is in the area badly hit by the recent Iowa floods, so if you make this recipe, send those folks some good thoughts for strength in their crisis.

I use very fresh eggs and in all the years I've been making this ice cream, we've never had a problem with the raw eggs. I always give everyone fair warning about them in case anyone is pregnant and is being careful about those things. You can substitute pasteurized eggs or just leave out the eggs altogether. Additionally, this recipe is a very light milky version of ice cream with a much higher proportion of milk to cream.

Aunt Florence's Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream
Makes 2 quarts

Whisk together in a large bowl:
2 eggs
1 cup sugar

Add:
2 cups heavy cream (whipping cream)
1 Tablespoon Vanilla
5 cups milk (use whole, lowfat, or skim as you desire)
1/4 tsp salt

Stir together well and make as ice cream according to manufacturers instructions on your ice cream maker.

Enjoy! My favorite summer ice cream treat is hot fudge sundaes with bananas over cream puffs. Cream puffs are so incredibly easy to make you should try baking those too!

Molasses Crinkles Recipe

Donna asked for the molasses cookie recipe. There is a family story behind them.

My mom spent her earliest years on a rustic farm in Iowa. My grandfather's family had been Swedish peasants and didn't want to use these newfangled contraptions called "tractors". Needless to say... the farm grandpa worked was not too successful. This was some land on my grandma's side. Her people were Hungarians who immigrated here when they lost their land in the old country because of land reforms. The Hungarian side of my family adapted to new farming techniques much more readily.

Anyway... Mom was a little girl on the farm before they moved to town and Grandpa worked for John Deere (building tractors and farm equipment... oh, the irony...) She didn't have many playmates because it was pretty isolated out there. Eventually at about age 7, she was invited to sleep over at another little girl's house. That girl's mother made these cookies for her visit. My mom loved them and asked for the recipe, even though she was too young to cook them in the kitchen. The mother was so pleased to be asked that she sat down right away to write the recipe. This same little girlfriend also explained to my mom the shocking details of how babies are made.

Often I am a butter snob when it comes to cookies, but the spice flavors of these are strong, so you can get away with margarine or shortening. I prefer dark brown sugar and dark or"robust" molasses. This makes a big difference in flavor, as does using heaping measurements of the spices instead of level measurements.


Molasses Crinkles
Preheat oven to 375 and grease cookie sheets.

Mix thoroughly:
3/4 cup soft margarine
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses

Mix in gradually:

2 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 heaping teaspoon cloves
1 heaping teaspoon ginger
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon

Chill dough. It will be sticky. Roll dough into uniform sized balls and roll them in granulated sugar. Bake on greased baking sheet at 375 for 10-12 minutes.

Enjoy! These are great at Holiday time because they aren't so sweet and the sugared outside gives them a bit of sparkle.