Please try to say that five times fast. 🙂

The end of June is fast approaching, and, quite frankly, it still doesn’t really feel like summer in Georgia.  I honestly can’t remember a year that we weren’t in drought, but, according to the National Drought Monitor, we’re not.  I know, I know, it doesn’t really need to be sweltering outside to make ice cream–let’s face it, I was making ice cream back in February–but I’d be feeling a whole lot more Summer-y if my ice cream was melting faster than I could scoop it out of the container.

Is there any less weird way to take a picture of an ice cream cone? If only they could float in the air.

I’ve actually wanted to make Bailey’s ice cream for quite a while.  My problem with most of the recipes I’ve found is that they require cooking, and I am decidedly anti-cooking when it comes to ice cream.  Yes, I’ll do it, but I hate having to heat everything up because then you have to stick it in the fridge for a few hours to get it to cool back down again before putting it in the maker…and then after the maker you have to wait for it to firm up a bit in the freezer, and that extra little bit of waiting just kills me.

Ice cream in the great outdoors of my porch…and seriously, this is the only pic that I don’t look like I’m holding a microphone. I should have found a cool hat and a book and pretended to be the Statue of Liberty.

So I came up with my own recipe.  Well, adapted my own recipe from that wonderful Ben and Jerry’s Book that I used back in April to make strawberry ice cream.  I had  tried their Kahlua Amaretto before, and it was wonderful, so I compared my alcohol percentages (Kahlua is 26.5% alcohol by volume and Amaretto is 21%).  As Irish Cream is only 17%, I figured it was a safe swap, and fortunately I was right.  It actually freezes a whole heck of a lot better than the other recipe AND it doesn’t melt as fast which is definitely a plus.  Ben and Jerry warn, “Whenever you flavor an ice cream with liqueur, you’ll either end up with a subtly flavored ice cream or an unfreezable sweet cream liquid mix that reeks of alcohol”(23).  This recipe freezes really well.  I would suggest leaving your ice cream in the freezer to harden for a little normal than longer(for me it came out perfectly after 24 hrs.  4 never works for me.  It’s always still too soft and then it starts melting before I’ve even dished out everybody’s bowls.), because alcohol does depress the freezing point so colder =better.

In case this doesn’t work like I’m hoping it will, please excuse my possible lack of pictures in the instructions below.  I’m trying out a new plugin and I’m fairly certain I wont know if the pictures will show up for sure or not until I hit “publish”, so I’m just going to go for it.

Two plugins later, I think I’ve found a winner.

No-Cook Chocolate Chip Irish Cream Ice Cream

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Ingredients

• 2 Large eggs
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 2 cups heavy or whipping cream
• 1 cup milk (preferably whole milk)
• 1/2 cup Irish Cream (Baileys, St. Brendan's etc.)
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips (Or more. I tend to lean towards more, but I like chocolate.)

Directions

Step 1
Whisk eggs for a minute until light and fluffy.
Step 2
Slowly whisk sugar in, little by little. Continue whisking for a minute to make certain that the sugar is incorporated.
Step 3
Add milk and cream and whisk until mixed.
Step 4
Add Irish Cream and whisk until mixed. (This wont really change the consistency, but it will change the color a bit.)
Step 5
Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and freeze according to your manufacturer's instructions or your own experience. My instructions say 20 minutes, but my maker actually takes 25 minutes. It may take you a few extra minutes regardless because of the alcohol. The picture was taken when it was almost finished running.
Step 6
When you have roughly two minutes left, slowly pour in the chocolate chips.
Step 7
Once ice cream is finished, pour into your container. I like to use a spoonula to quickly scrape it off the sides. Gently press plastic wrap down on top of the ice cream. Put the lid on your container(it should fit right over the plastic wrap) and place in the freezer. Adding the plastic wrap prevents a layer of frost/ice from forming on top.
Step 8
Be patient. Let the ice cream sit in the freezer for a least 4 hours. I suggest letting it harden overnight or a full 24 hours. After you've let it harden in the freezer for a good long while, take it back out, scoop it into a bowl or onto a cone and enjoy!

For those of you that missed last weeks post due to BlueHost’s wonderful network errors, travel back in time to the Marietta Hamfest my dad and I attended a few weeks ago and meet the pony.  It’s a not a real pony…but imagine.  And, according to the manufacturer’s info (which the great detective Julie found on Amazon), it can actually hold an 80 lb kid.  Makes me wish I was that small.

If any body had any ideas to make this recipe any better, I’m totally up for suggestions.  Eventually I’ll get a second freezer bowl for my maker to make testing a bit easier, but as you have to wait a day for the bowl to refreeze it’s a little difficult to whip up multiple batches in a row.  I did find a recipe on allrecipes that uses part brown sugar part white, so I think that may be my next tweak.

Thanks for reading guys, have a great week, and as always, if you like what you read please share a comment or subscribe via Bloglovin or email. 🙂