I don't remember the holiday ice cream at all. Does it use pudding in the recipe? I had the regular hand-crank kind but it blew away in a hurricane in '95. Now I have the kind the has the insert you freeze & a Cuisinart kind (I think) that hasn't made it out of the box. SINFULLY SCRUMPTIOUS ICE CREAM 4 cups + 3/4 cup heavy cream 3/4 cup milk 1 1/2 cups sugar 1/2 tsp salt 8 egg yoks, well bezten 4 cups mashed peaches or stawberries (I've used frozen) Scald the 3/4 cup cream with the milk in the top of a double boiler over direct heat. Add the sugar & salt. Pour a small amount of the milk mixture into the beaten yolks. Add the yolks to the milk mixture & over simmering water cook until thickened to a custard consistency (coating the back of a spoon.) Remove from the heat & cool. Mix the mashed fruit with the remaining 4 cups cream. Blend into the cooled custard. If using a manual freezer, fill container 3/4 full. Pack ice & rock salt around the edges, using 3 parts ice to 1 part salt. When the crank gets too hard to turn & the ingredients have solidified to a soft ice cream stage, remove the dasher & pack down the ice cream. Repack fresh ice & salt around the sides, wrap in burlap or newspaper & let stand 1 hour. Freeze in paper cartons. For an electric ice cream freezer, follow the manufacturer's directions.~~ PEPPERMINT ICE CREAM 2 cups whole milk, divided 1 TBL cornstarch 1/4 cup sugar 1 TBL vanilla extract 2 cups heavy cream 12-16 oz pkg peppermint hard candy Soak peppermint candy in cream to melt. Scald 1 1/2 cups milk. In top of double boiler, mix sugar & cornstarch well. Add yolks & 1/2 cup milk & mix well. Add scalded milk slowly to yolk mixture & cook, stirring over simmering water until mixture coats spoon. Cool. Add cream. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.~~ HOMEMADE VANILLA ICE CREAM (1 1/2 gallons) 1 qt milk 3 cups sugar 5 3ggs, beaten 1 TBL vanilla 3 cups half-and-half 3 cups whipping cream Optional: toasted coconut, toasted almonds, Kahlua Heat milk & sugar in a suacepan until hot & sugar is dissolved. Do not boil. Stir a little of the hot milk into the beaten eggs. Add eggs to remaining hot milk in saucepan & stir well. Remove from heat & cool. Add vanilla & refrigerate. (Keeps for several days.) When ready to freeze, stir in half-and-half, whipping cream & any optional ingredients. Pour into a hand-turned or electric freezer. Freeze per manufacturer's directions.~~ (If you have a small freezer, keep the mixture in the refrigerator & make as needed.) Haven't made this one but thought the additions were interesting: GOURMET ICE CREAM (1 1/2 qts.) 2 cups half-and-half 6 egg yolks 2/3 cups sugar 1 cup whipping cream, chilled One of the following: 1/4 cup brandy, 2 tsp vanilla, 8 oz semisweet melted chocolate + 1/4 cup bourbon, or 1/4 cup cream sherry or 2 oz candied lemon peel + 3 oz toasted almonds Heat half-and-half in top of double boiler until bubbles form around edge of pan. Beat yolks & sugar until thick & pale. Add 1/2 cup of hot half-and-half to yolk mixture. Stir well. Pour yolk mixture into top of double boiler. Cook, stirring constantly until mixture coats the back of a spoon. Remove from heat & add your choice of flavorings. Stir in whipping cream. Cool to room temperature. chill at least 4 hours. Pour into container of a hand-turned or electric ice cream freezer. Freeze per manufacturer's directions.~~ From Food for Thought.

We have a hand-crank Donvier we got when we were married in 1995 that is almost constantly in use from about the 4th of July to mid-September. (The brand-name one is overpriced. Get a clone, which can be had for under $20 on sale.) DH wants an electric and I may get him one for his birthday (which is 2 days after Christmas LOL) if end-of-summer sales yield any REALLY good prices on reliable machines. Here's the base recipe we use, from the Ben & Jerry's book... I don't think you could GET any simpler, and it's surprisingly good. We pretty much never use a custard base because our kitchen is not air conditioned, and diddling around making custard in a 90-odd degree kitchen is officially Not Worth It in our book. For a 1 quart ice cream maker, combine 1 can sweetened, condensed milk (many of us remember it as "Eagle milk") with 2 cups light cream, a splash of vanilla extract and a pinch of salt. Do NOT leave out the salt! Stir well, chill at least 2 hours before putting in the ice cream maker. You can substitute full-fat ("cream top") vanilla yogurt for half the cream but it doesn't really save you much calorically, just does interesting things to the flavor and can make you feel a little virtuous LOL! Lower-fat yogurts give a strange chalky texture and unsweetened yogurt makes for very sour product. (Found from unpleasant experience that just chucking a quart of yogurt straight from the container into the ice cream maker, no matter how yummy it is normally, does not make nice frozen yogurt, oh no not at all!) There's a simple plain base, now start playing... A super easy way to get a delicious fruity flavor ice cream is to substitute 1 cup of a good strong jam for 1 cup of the cream. (I don't recommend doing both jam and yogurt and eliminating all the cream. The result came out... the only word I can find for it is "stretchy".) The jam concentrates the fruit's flavor; warm "seedy" jams like raspberry or blackberry until they're liquidy and push them through a strainer if you don't want to be picking seeds out of your teeth for days. If you want fruit pieces, line a cookie sheet with the nonstick foil or baking parchment (or a Silpat if you're blessed with one), spread out a layer of finely chopped fruit with the pieces not touching, or minimally touching, and freeze rock solid. Add the fruit pieces at the very end of churning. Toast any nuts you wish to add for a stronger, "nuttier" flavor; and grating frozen chocolate bars on the largest holes of a grater (use an oven mitt to hold the chocolate so your body heat doesn't melt it) gives a better result IMO than using chocolate chips, even the mini kind. If you want to use something like butterscotch chips, freeze them and break them up in small batches in a food processor on "pulse". Good use for one of those mini-chopper types. Remember that your liquid ice cream/sorbet/yogurt mixture has to be almost sickeningly-sweet in its unfrozen state to taste "normal" as a finished product - the cold numbs your taste buds so all the flavors have to be STRONG. Oh, and filling the churning chamber more than about 2/3 full, 3/4 at the most, can be a recipe for a Big Sticky Mess. So don't do it. Honey-sweetened ice cream does not store well more than 24 hours - it gets crumbly and weird-textured, so if you want to do something with honey, have enough people around to scarf it down within hours of curing. Alcohol will interfere in the solidifying process so if you really load it up even with an overnight cure you may not get more than a "soft serve" texture. We bought a whole slew of nice little (not quite 1/2 cup) lidded plastic containers into which we portion the ice cream while it's still in the "soft serve" state. Pop them in the freezer and in 4 hours it's solidified enough to have the proper ice cream "mouthfeel", although I like 8 hours' curing time. If we don't pre-portion it DH will go WAY overboard! Oh, and the famous Mark Bittman/New York Times "eggless ice cream" was IMNSHO utterly REVOLTING.

Wow, Jenn thought I was Sol ! What a nice compliment to meeeee!!! Here's the Lavender Honey Ice Cream recipe, which I found on line! David Lebovitz' Honey Lavender Ice Cream 1/2 cup honey 1/4 cup fresh lavender flowers 1 1/2 cups whole milk (Susans note: I used half & half) 1/4 cup sugar pinch salt 1 1/2 cups heavy cream 5 large eggs (you will only use the yolks) Âroom temp Sooz's Notes: 2 T vodka (80 proof) to keep the ice cream from becoming icy A bit of gel food coloring to make it look lavender (or whatever color you want) Instructions: Pull the lavender flowers off the stems & measure out the flowers. Heat honey with ½ lavender, just until bubbles start to form in the honey (Sooz's note: I used the microwave). Remove from the heat, and let sit an hour or so to extract some of that tasty lavender flavor. It may look kinda funny, but it's okay. Put the cream in a bowl. Rewarm the honey a bit to make it runny and pour it through a sieve into the cream. Squish those lavender flowers with the back of a spoon to get out as much flavor as possible. Add 2 T vodka to this bowl. Meanwhile, warm the milk, sugar and salt until the sugar and salt dissolve, and the milk is hot. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites, and beat the egg yolks into a yellow foamy looking foam. Add the warm milk to the yolks, a tiny little bit at a time, mixing constantly. You have to add the milk slooooowly especially at the beginning. Put the egg yolk mix back on the stove, and heat, stirring constantly over medium-low heat. Use a thermometer for this next part, as it will keep you from curdling the custard base. Heat to 175°F. Never stop stirring. At 175°F, the custard should have thickened nicely, shouldn't have curdled, and will be ready for the next step. Immediately pour this through a sieve (just in case there are any cooked egg bits in your custard), pour the hot custard over the lavender flowers (which are in the sieve anyway) and into the cool cream. Mix gently, and add the remainder of the lavender. Sooz's Notes: I used violet "gel" coloring and added it with the remainder of the lavender. If you add too little food coloring, it will look a sickly grayish color. Keep adding the gel coloring until you get what color you want. I used the end of a toothpick to add the color, then stirred with a spoon. Cool in the fridge overnight. Sieve out the fresh lavender, and run the mixture through your ice cream maker, using the directions for your machine (make sure you froze the freeze-y canister for at least 24 hours). Then, you slowly pour in the sieved ice cream mix into a the machine while the beater is stirring on low. If you pour in the mixture and then turn on the machine, it may cause a problem as the paddle may not be able to move. Churn for 25-ish minutes. Scoop into a cold container, and leave in the freezer overnight to finish hardening it. Enjoy! Here's the link for the recipe to the Amaretto Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream. Scroll down and look for the big picture of it!

I've been on an ice cream making kick also! Although hubby and I BOTH love ice cream, so it doesn't stay around all that long. I used to make a recipe that had sweetened condensed milk, milk and milk in it (can't remember if it had cream or not, probably so)... I have switched to a recipe that includes raw eggs, milk, cream sugar..... and it freezes SO much better. The texture is even better when eating it right out of the icecream freezer. We like it so much better....