In his book, Alton Brown’s Gear for Your Kitchen, Alton Brown says of old-fashioned ice cream makers, “Everyone loves ice cream, and the average American consumes more than 23 pints a year. Maybe that explains why people have put up with those hand-crank machines for the last 150 years, and why they remain popular despite the invention of electricity in the development of the electric ice cream machine.”  So today, I’m playing the side of the defense, and will be making the case for these old-timey devices. Here we’ll look a little into the history, some advantages and disadvantages, as well as how to get the most from your machine.

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photo credit: Mdrewe

I ran across something interesting in the New York times today that seemed like with a little bit of work, could be replicated at home and would be a cool feature at say a Halloween party. Perhaps you could churn up some pumpkin and chocolate chip ice cream with a bit of alchemy flair. The idea comes from Lulu & Mooky’s a New York ice cream shop that whips up their homemade ice cream with little bit of added flair. Rather than using a traditional ice cream maker, they use a KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment and get this liquid nitrogen. So for Mr Tapper and Ram Chhetri, the store's owners, rock salt and ice isn't good enough. They instead go all Bill Nye the Science Guy on their favorite frosty treat.  And it's this novel application of science that, in my mind, would make this worth playing around with as a center piece for a Halloween party. Just imagine, the smoky cauldron, maybe you serve it in little carved out pumpkins or shrunken heads.

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photo credit: bulliver

You can probably guess from the name of the website that I favor home made ice cream and it seems that now, I have  a really good reason as it turns out that store-bought ice cream can kill you! Ok maybe that was a bit drastic but it could be true. I was reading the news headlines in Google today and ran across a recall of the Dove Ice Cream Company's product, Carmel Pecan Perfection which sound like a heavenly name and it'll certainly get you there if you're allergic to peanuts. According to newspaper, The Daily Citizen, as submitted by the Georgia Department of Agriculture, there was one batch of ice cream, lot number 931AB5YN07, that got made with an additional ingredient not listed on the ingredients label: peanuts.  From the newspaper article:

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