Old Uncle Gaylord's Ice Cream

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Take a cup of crushed ice and distribute it evenly around the opening between the can and the tub. Now take about a quartercup of salt and spread it evenly over the to Start turning crank (and don't stop until the ice cream is finished), smoothly and slowly. Continue filling the freezer sides with alternate layers of the and rock salt ... about 4 parts ice to 1 part salt is a safe formula. Keep that crank turning. Don't cover the can lid with ice or salt. Put them only as high as the bottom of the lid and stop. When the ice melts and goes down a bit, add more ice, then another layer of salt on top. Keep churning away, mixing up the rich cream.

If after 15 or 20 minutes the ice cream isn't getting too hard to turn the crank, then its probable that you`ve used too little salt. It it gets too difficult to crank alter 10 minutes or so, then you've probably used too much. Experience will help you hone in on the exact time it takes your particular freezer (and your recipe) to freeze a batch. If done properly, you should have ice cream hard enough to dish out in about 18 minutes or so.

The cranking will get harder and harder. No heroics here, no strong-arm tactics necessary, just steady as you go. Finally, the crank is nearly impossible to turn. The paddle has beaten the cream into a frozen mass that won't mix any further. No problem, you're done!

The ice cream will come out of your freezer at about 25°F. For it to hold together on a cone or such, A should be served at a much lower temperature. Doing this at home is simple. After you remove the paddle, place a piece of waxed paper over the top of the can, replace the lid, put a small paper plug in the hole at the top of the lid (this hole is where the paddle shaft fits), Now, drain off all the water and then re-ice and salt the freezer, using the same proportions of ice and salt as you used for the original icing. This is called "curing" or "packing" the freezer.

It permits the ice cream to get much harder within a relatively short period of time. Packing, if done properly, will hold the ice cream for up to 6 hours.

THE ICE CREAM

Now, let's talk about the basic recipe, or mix. To make it easy to remember, we call it a mess—M.E.S.S.— because it contains milk (and cream), eggs, salt, and sweetener. No matter what else you add, old-fashioned ice cream always includes these ingredients.

Cream, particularly the whipping cream that is available in most grocery stores, is very expensive. To cut costs, we suggest commercial half-and-half. This will give you an 11% butterfat ice cream, which is about what you get at the plastic and neon ice cream store.

If you personally want it a bit "richer", then we suggest that for every quart of half-and-half you add half a pint of whipping cream. This will bring your butterfat to about 15%, somewhat higher than commercially available ice creams. Of course, your costs will increase with the addition of the whipping cream and you should be careful of overcreaming, which could lead to hardening of the arteries or some other such malady that seems to plague human ice cream eaters.

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