Two Scoops, Please

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about ice cream. No doubt, it’s popular. I’m sure ice cream dislikers exist but they probably keep it on the down-low, tired of listening to people’s shocked exclamations. I happen to be related to someone who doesn’t like chocolate and people are shocked, shocked I tell you, when they find out. Why so much thought about ice cream? It’s National Ice Cream Day and the goal is to MAKE HOMEMADE ICE CREAM.

Lee, the ice cream maker in our house, uses a fancy machine to whip up his delectable creations. He’s a hobby guy and when the hobby is in the first blush of love, you get a lot of it. When the machine first entered our lives, circa 2017, we were flush with varieties: toasted marshmallow, popcorn, Meyer lemon, and the so-called Breakfast of Champions, made with Frosted Flakes cereal, which I love, but eating it felt like discovering a Band-Aid in every other bite. The machine has made two moves with us and sometimes still gets called up to the big leagues but now we tend to get our ice cream from Harris Teeter or a local ice cream shop (we like Andia’s or Two Roosters).

I love a good lemon dessert and Lee had a recipe for lemon ice cream from his go-to book, Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones. The ingredients were basic: egg yolks, sugar, heavy cream, 2% milk, salt, and lemon curd. You can buy or make lemon curd but I didn’t have to.

On July 14th, aka Bastille Day, Elisabeth brought all the makings for a crepe feast: fresh strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, Nutella, powdered sugar. She also had homemade crepe batter, whipped cream, pastry cream, and lemon curd. Lee cooked the crepes and we all ate them while we watched the Tour de France: dangerously slim men climbing incredibly steep mountains in scorchingly high heat.

Delicious and I had my lemon curd.

With Lee as my guide, I measured and whisked, and whisked, and whisked, and whisked. So much whisking. The rest was easy and the ice cream was good.

Thoughts on making homemade ice cream:

1. The right machine makes it much easier. I don’t know if they still make those ’70s-style machines that required rock salt and sounded like a truck on a gravel road but if they do I wouldn’t waste my time, nostalgic or not.
2. Egg yolks are key. You need them to get the consistency right. The aforementioned ’70s machine, in my experience, created either milk with ice shards or sweet, cold soup, not ice cream.
3. Too much whisking involved. Not during the actual ice-cream-making part, the machine does that, but the incorporation of the egg yolks and the milk and the cream and the lemon curd. My arm was tired.
4. Time is a factor. You are not going to whip this up quickly.
5. Like dinner and other food-related things, it’s much better when someone else will make it for you.

I conducted an unscientific poll of my family members asking where ice cream ranked on their list of favorite treats/desserts and found that it ranks high, within the top two for most. Cookies and cake also popular, with a mention of pie, chocolate, brownies and even donuts. And, apparently in my family, if you bring forth the topic of dessert you will also automatically manifest the need to immediately eat dessert.

Someone told me, and I quote, “Store-bought cookies and cakes are a poor substitute for homemade, but store-bought ice cream is better than homemade when you consider the sweat equity involved.” Fact.

What I love about ice cream, beyond just the ice cream, is the memories it evokes.

My dad loved ice cream. Every night he’d dig in the freezer for the box of vanilla ice cream and end the day with a scoop or two. As he got older, the dogs got a spoonful, too.

My mother-in-law, before she was my mother-in-law, cranked out ice cream with fresh peaches and love.

Four-year-old Rachel would bolt upright from any activity at the distant tones of the ice cream truck circling our neighborhood on base in Quantico, Virginia. I’d scramble for a couple of ones and we’d dash to the curb, both girls clutching their money, ready for a taste of summer.

The giant red Adirondack chair at Bruster’s in Chesapeake, Virginia, was a favorite spot and a regular destination when we had visitors in town. That turtle sundae, oh man.

Andrew, Lee, and I spent many a hot summer night during the great frozen yogurt craze at Tutti Frutti in Burke, Virginia easing into our new home, new community, creating new memories.

For years, we joined my brothers and sisters, and their spouses and kids to converge on Osage Beach, Missouri, for one long weekend each summer. After a day at the lake or in the pool, we would wait in line and debate which frozen custard was better: Andy’s or Randy’s.

Most memories I have of visiting someone or someone visiting includes a trip for ice cream. I guess what I’m saying is that ice cream, for me, is interwoven with love. That same argument could apply to cake or cookies, see birthdays and baking things together, respectively, but I’m sticking with the idea that eating ice cream was meant to be a shared experience. Not the making of it, like cookies, or the consuming of it, like birthday or wedding cake, just the having of it, at home, on vacation, after a day at the beach, or a night on the town. Ice cream is there for you, and the good thing is, you don’t need to make it at home.

I’ll ask you, where is ice cream on your list of favorite treats/desserts? Do you have thoughts on homemade ice cream or memories of grinding rock salt or waiting for the ice cream truck? I appreciate your time and attention, I’d have a scoop with each of you.

Thanks for reading!

Before you go…when I asked about ice cream, three family members referenced Braum’s which is an institution in Oklahoma. Last March, in the state for a wedding, we were excited to get a Braum’s fix. I’m not sure if it was a delivery issue or a freezer issue but they were out of almost everything, including Elisabeth’s favorite: Peppermint. Not to be deterred, we did what what we had to do and went to a different location. I am partial to chocolate chip ice cream, which I’m sad to say, isn’t as easy to find as it used to be. And no, mint chocolate chip will not work for me. Braum’s has fantastic chocolate chip ice cream, I like it as a shake. I hope we can all agree that shakes, ice cream sandwiches, sundaes, yogurt, custard, even those treats on the ice cream truck- none of which are actually ice cream-are all a part of the ice cream universe. Like Marvel, only better.