Homemade Ice cream and Caramel sauce

  I indulged and bought an electric ice cream maker a few years ago. And now that the Sunshine is getting older we are having fun making ice cream together. For Valentines Day we had homemade ice cream with my own caramel sauce. It is so easy to do, (if you have an ice cream maker). The recipe is called, Old fashioned Ice Cream and  my sister got it at a  museum one year. It is  especially good with quality vanilla. I happen to have some vanilla brought to me from Columbia, but if you don’t have  good quality vanilla and you want some than you can make it your self. That’s right, and this makes me very, very excited because good vanilla is hard to come by and baking tastes SO much better with good vanilla. I didn’t know this until last week when I found it on a blog that I frequent. It is supposed to taste like pure vanilla from South America. I have not tried it yet but I am going too. Check out this recipe at Chickens in the Road.   

O.k. on with ice cream, this is what you need.

In a blender add 2 eggs (I take the little squiggly-thing off the yolk because I would hate to have that in my mouth!!) This is Sunshine’s favourite part because she gets to ,”pop” the yolks.

 add ½ cup of sugar

And ¾ teaspoons Vanilla 

Then blend until the sugar is dissolved.

Now add 2 cups of half and half  and ½ cup of whipping cream to the blender. Whip this up, then add the mixture to your ice cream machine.

( Just a note; if you put your ice cream cylinder in a plastic bag before placing it in the freezer you won’t have to wipe out the little crumbs  before making your ice cream)

Then watch it churn and get thick,( about 2o min).

And have yourself a little taste. Do you like it Sunshine?

And if you thought that was simple enough then just wait because the caramel sauce is even easier!!

For your caramel sauce, all you do is add the can (as in the whole can, unopened) of sweetened condensed milk to a pot of water and let it boil for two hours.

Like this.

I found that it is not as sweet as store bought ice cream topping. If it is too thick to pour, add a bit of cream. And walla! You have your very own homemade  ice cream and sauce and if you sprinkle some homemade granola on top you are the homemade queen!!!!  (I added coloured sprinkles because my granola is gone already!)

Have fun.

 And tell me, was I the only one who was surprised you could make your own vanilla? and did you already know that sweetened condensed milk would make caramel sauce?  This caramel sauce, by the way, is very good on toast too, hmm hmm. I’m gonna go have more!!

This post is being linked over at It coulda’ been Worse for her Saturday Stirringscheck it out over there because others are sharing their favourate recipes too.