Dads and Ice Cream

Happy Father’s Day!

A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.  ~Author Unknown

My dad loved ice cream. Mom would buy the Neapolitan three flavor ice cream and serve it in slices. I liked the strawberry section best. Sometimes Dad would buy lemon flavored ice cream because he knew us kids wouldn’t eat much of it. LOL. Now I’d love that flavor. But what Dad liked best was homemade ice cream.

Years ago,  after my sisters and I had started our own families, we’d go home to celebrate Father’s Day with Dad.  And most of the time, we made ice cream. Actually, not just on Father’s Day, but any Sunday or holiday gathering in the summer was a great time to get out the crank freezer, hammer some ice chunks in a gunny sack, find the salt, and churn some ice cream. The same was true when we gathered with my husband’s family in the summertime.

May is great for Mother’s Day because it’s the perfect time to get new flowers, but June is just as perfect for Father’s Day because of how dads love being outside and they love ice cream.

My dad had a White Mountain ice cream freezer. The kind you cranked yourself. Those plug-in types like the one you see in the picture where we made some Father’s Day ice cream when our kids came home to celebrate with their dad a few years ago do work. But if you want to make the best ice cream, an old-fashioned crank freezer turned with  muscle power and not electrical power is the best.

Taking turns cranking that freezer while you anticipated the ice cream you’d soon be eating was part of the fun on Dad’s day. Even the little kids got in on the action in the early going before the ice cream started to harden. Mom cooked the stock. Then we’d mash up some bananas, the riper the better, some cream or half and half, more milk if needed, and a dash of vanilla. At times, we made strawberry if they were ripe or peaches if we had any, but my dad thought there was nothing as good as banana and my husband agreed as did his dad. So, we nearly always made banana. My daughter-in-law makes blackberry sometimes, but we never did that for dad or for my father-in-law either. They knew what they liked and it was banana.

Once, I did experiment with a recipe for chocolate, but  the dads thought it was a waste of time and effort. I sort of agreed with them. Next time I went shopping for bananas.

After Mom had the canister/tub loaded with the ice cream stock and fruit, she turned it over to the guys and kids to freeze. Dad, who had been churning ice cream since he was a boy, knew exactly the right mix of salt and ice to freeze it the fastest. Sometimes the grandkids helped add the crushed ice around the tub. Sometimes they churned while the crank was easy to turn. We watched for the water from the salt-melted ice to start dribbling out of the overflow hole in the wooden tub. When that happened you knew you were getting somewhere. That would be when the men would take over the cranking.

Finally Dad would declare the crank too hard to turn, open the top very carefully to keep the salt on the outside and not in the ice cream, and pull out the dasher. Mom would pass out spoons to the kids to get a first taste from that. Then Dad would put a cork in the top, drain off the salty ice water somewhere it didn’t matter if the plants died. maybe on a stubborn poison ivy plant at the edge of the yard. Then he would pack in more ice and salt, tie newspapers around it with baling twine, and cover it with a thick blanket. After an hour or so, the wraps would come off and it would be ice cream time.

We don’t make ice cream as much as we did while Dad and my father-in-law were living. The White Mountain freezer finally wore out, but the memories live on. However, if we do make ice cream, I always use my mother’s recipe for the stock. I share it below in case you want to give it a try. Makes extra delicious ice cream even in those plug in freezers. She cooked it in a double boiler, but nowadays you can probably microwave it or cook it with a lot of stirring in an iron skillet. This made about a gallon once you added the mashed fruit and additional cream or milk.

MOM’S ICE CREAM STOCK

Stir 1/2 cup all purpose flour into 2 cups sugar.

Add 3 eggs, beaten. Stir in 6 cups milk.

Cook over hot water (see note above) until slightly thickened. Remove from heat and beat hard. To the above mixture add sufficient milk, a pint of cream (or half-and-half), your choice of mashed fruit (for banana ice cream, mash up 6 or 7 really ripe bananas) or flavoring. Stir well, pour into your ice cream freezer and have fun making some yummy ice cream.

Thanks for reading. Hope you had a blessed and happy Father’s Day.

Have you ever churned up some homemade ice cream? Eaten any? Have a favorite flavor?