MapleEngineer

This is probably my favorite ice cream shop. It's located on Fairmont Avenue at Gladstone in Ottawa, Ontario CANADA. They make awesome ice cream including a large vegan selection. You can buy it by the scoop in cones or bowls, as ice cream based treats, in pints, or my favorite, in milkshakes.

I had a delicious chocolate milk shake this afternoon and it was absolutely delicious. It's not one of those nasty extruded frozen treat things you get at fast food restaurants. It starts with three scoops of hard ice cream and milk and they mix it right in front of you.

If you're in Ottawa please go by and check them out. They're good people and make great ice cream.

https://themerrydairy.com/

I've been making ice cream. My son's softball team plays in a tournament in a couple of weeks. We have what we call the cake challenge where if they do any one of a number of things (hit the fence, score a home run, get a double play, get a bunt double) I'll make a cake and bring it to the next game. I've done it three times so far this year. I Decided that for the tournament I would make ice cream.

So far I've made:

No Nuts

22 x Vanilla

17 x Aztec Chocolate

12 x Smartie

11 x York Peppermint Pattie

12 x Oreo

Almonds

12 x Milk Chocolate Almond Crunch

24 x Skor Bits

12 x Skor Bar

That's 122 x 125 ml cups.

I hope that's enough.

This is just my standard vanilla ice cream base (500 ml 35% cream, 1 L 10% cream, 300 g sugar, 15 ml vanilla extract) with chopped Oreo cookies. I put 12 cookies in each batch and each batch makes twelve 125 ml cups so each cup has a full cookie in it.

I went looking for an ice cream focused community in the lemmy.world federated fediverse and couldn't find anything so I created one.

The Ice Cream community is focused on ice cream. Homemade ice cream, recipes, pictures, stories, good commercial ice cream, your favourite ice cream treat or favorite ice cream shop.

I make homemade ice cream and am in the middle of a run. I have made vanilla, (Canadian) Smartie, and milk chocolate almond cluster so far but I have a few more to make before I'm done.

I've posted my favourite ice cream base recipe and a recipe for spicy Aztec Chocolate Ice cream.

If you're a fan of ice cream come check it out.

I recorded a short video of the Cuisinart ICE-50 churning a batch of vanilla ice cream. The ICE-50 is a now discontinued and no longer supported with spare parts self-chilling ice cream machine. You just pour in the base, turn it on, and it makes a batch of ice cream in about 45 minutes.

The lumps you see are more frozen pieces of ice cream. It freezes on the wall of the tub and is scraped off by the paddle creating a slurry of more and less frozen ice cream. Once it's put into a container and frozen it's nice and smooth.

I would highly recommend the ICE-50 to anyone who is interested in ice cream making. They have not been made or supported for years but our two are tanks and just keep going. I can't offer an opinion on the newer machines other than to say if you buy one buy spare parts for everything you can. A motor arm, two stem and paddle assemblies or two of each if you buy them individually, a bucket, and at least four covers. That will keep you going for 20 or 30 years as long as the machine keeps running.

Yesterday, I was filling 125 ml cups with ice cream. I got 12 cups filled and in the freezer and had less than 125 ml left so I walked over and handed my 15 year old son the tub and the spoon that I was using to fill the cups.

[Later]

Me: How did you like the ice cream?

Son: It was great. What kind of berries were those?

Me: What berries?

Son: The ones in the ice cream.

Me: Did you not taste them?

Son: No, I don't like berries.

Me: They were (Canadian) Smarties (see NOTE).

Son: Smarties?

Me: Yes. You really should try things that I hand you.

Son: [Nomming on the smarties left in the bottom of the container covered in melted vanilla chocolate.] Uh huh.

NOTE: Canadian Smarties are like M&Ms but with milkier, smoother, better quality chocolate.

We've had the machine on the right for years. We bought it new. We bought the one on the left at the Liquidators restaurant auction. I've got vanilla base in both. I'm going to put one batch in the freezer for the family and the other in 125 ml cups for my sons softball team. (Canadian) Smartie, I think.

This is a picture of the side of my market ice cream freezer. It's a bar fridge sized vertical freezer that I put in the back of my van and run off the van's AC power to get to market then switch over to a small, very quiet generator at market. These cards have magnetic strips on the back so they stick to the freezer and I can move them to the back when a flavour sells out.

Most of our ice cream starts with the same vanilla base recipe.

RECIPE

1 L (4 cups) table (10%) cream (Half and Half in the US)

300 g (1 1/2 cup) granulated sugar

500 ml (2 cups) whipping (35%) cream

15 ml (1 tablespoon) vanilla extract

I add 250 ml to 500 ml of whatever the addition is. (See NOTE 1)

PROCESS

Pour the 10% cream into a 2 L (8 cup) container.

Add the sugar and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. (See NOTE 2)

Add the 35% cream and vanilla extract and stir to mix.

Cover the container and put it into the fridge to chill or add it directly to your machine.

NOTE 1: If I'm using (Canadian) Smarties (like M&Ms but better) I use less because they pack very densely. If I'm adding nuts or something that packs more loosely I use more. When I'm making raspberry or blackberry or other fruit ice cream I use about 300 ml of mascerated berries (add about 12.5 g (1 tablespoon) of granulated sugar to the berries then mash them coarsely with a fork. Set them aside for 30 minutes or so to mascerate.) If you're using raspberries or blackberries or any other berries in the family always add them at the very end, just before the ice cream is finished or better, stir them in by hand after the ice cream is frozen. Berries in the family will produce very airy, almost foamy ice cream if added at the beginning.

NOTE 2: The sugar will not dissolve easily in the 35% cream or a mix of the 35% cream and 10% cream. It's much easier to dissolve it in the 10% cream then to add the 35% cream once it's dissolved.

This is a home made 18% milk fat ice cream with cinnamon and cayenne. It starts as a rich, creamy chocolate ice cream with a hit of cinnamon then it brings the burn.

The is a great ice cream for people who want a bit of pain with their pleasure.

Aztec Chocolate Ice Cream

INGREDIENTS

500 ml (2 cups) whipping cream (35%)

150 g (1 1/2 cup) granulated sugar

50 g (6 tablespoons) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cayenne powder (see NOTE)

85 g (3 ounces) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped

15 ml (1 tablespoon)vanilla extract

1 L (4 cups) table cream (10%) (Half and Half in the US)

PROCESS

Put the whipping cream, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, salt, and chili powder in a pot.

Heat over medium heat whisking constantly. It will begin to foam up as it begins to boil. Turn the heat off immediately.

Add the chocolate and stir until it's completely melted.

Add the vanilla then slowly add the 10% cream while stirring (or whisking.)

Put in the fridge for a couple of hours until well chilled.

Put it in your ice cream machine and run it until it's frozen.

Get a bowl, a spoon, and a Kleenex and you're ready for a delicious ice cream experience.

P.S. The tissue is for your runny nose.

NOTE: 2 teaspoons gives this ice cream a nice little burn. You can use more or less to get the heat level you want.

My boys were having a snuggle nap on the couch. I took a couple of pictures of them because they were cute then the big guy went for a BIG yawn. He's over 10 kg of cat and just over 10 years old. The smaller guy is around 5 kg and 6 years old. The big guy was a ditch kitten that someone tossed in the ditch in front of our house. We caught him and took him in. The next year someone ditched another kitten in front of our house and we took him in. Unfortunately, the second one slipped out the door and disappeared never to be seen again. The big guy was devistated. We decided to get him a companion and adopted the smaller guy from a cat rescue. They are abslutely inseparable.

I looked online to see if anyone made a treble using circle hooks but couldn't find any. I decided to make one myself to give it a try. I used a stainless steel treble that I cut the hooks off of as the core and the eye and three 5/0 octopus circles that I cut the eyes off as the hooks.

My thought was that I would hook less tongues and gills and have less multi-hook hookups with circles. It's dressed with a core of red bucktail with a skirt of yellow and stripes of brown.

I will attach this to a 1 oz nickel plated marine brass inline spinner and cast and burn for northern pike and other toothy predators.

If I end up with a multi-hook hookup I will know the experiment failed and I will cut the hooks to remove it. If I get hits and no hookups I'll know the experiment failed and I'll toss it in my box to be rehooked with a normal dressed treble and switch to something else for the day.

Given that the hooks are lashed and not braised I don't expect this thing to last more than two or three strikes. A normal bucktail treble ends up pretty chewed up and bare after four or five hookups.

If this thing works (I don't expect it to) I may braze two or three to continue the experiment.