How to Make Ice Cream at Work
Before the holidays, Soren and I decided to make ice cream with an awesome contraption he purchased online. The Play & Freeze ice cream maker has the ability to make ice cream without having to pre-freeze anything (unlike the usual Cuisinart ice cream maker that needs to be frozen 24 hours in advance). To make coffee ice cream, you need the following ingredients:
Coffee Ice Cream
Kosher Salt
Half & Half, Heavy Cream, or Milk
Ice cubes
Sugar
Vanilla Extract
Instant Coffee
First, as Vadim and Dorren demonstrate, open all of the sugar packets and pour them into a bowl:
We used about 15 packets of Sugar in the Raw from our pantry (our other option was Splenda).
Next, as Soren demonstrates, add one tablespoon of instant coffee (borrowed from Maria) into the smallest amount of water possible:
Open up the Play & Freeze and fill it with ice:
Then add kosher salt (rock salt is what you’re supposed to add, but any kind of salt is okay, as long as it’s not the salt used on the sidewalks):
Add a little vanilla to the instant coffee and water mixture:
Fill up the Play & Freeze canister with half and half:
The differences between using half and half, heavy cream, and milk: 1. the amount of fat you’re eating and 2. the amount of time it takes to actually make the ice cream. The lighter the liquid (i.e. skim milk), the longer you’ll have to roll the ball around for the ice cream to form.
You’re supposed to fill up the canister with 1/2 cup of half and half, but we didn’t have measuring cups at work and just winged it:
Adding our sugar:
We rolled the ball around the office for 10 minutes, which was quite a lot of work. Everyone got bored after a couple of minutes and stopped rolling the ball (a big no no!) OR people tried to KICK the ball, which is also a big no no because the plastic might BREAK! After 10 minutes, I shot a quick video of what the ice cream looked like:
We refilled the canister with more ice and rolled the ball around for another 10 minutes – it ended up being a really delicious soft serve, but since we wanted firmed ice cream, we scooped it out and put it in the freezer. Here are the final results:
Incredibly easy, fun, and delicious!
Reader Comments
This is super fun, thanks for the post!
Alright – you’ve convinced me there might actually be some social benefit for this contraption! (You know, kicking the thing around at work with your co-workers. Maybe it should be featured in team building training sessions next.)
But really you can do the same thing with two coffee cans that fit inside one another, or even two ziplock bags. If you’d like some more ideas of what to put inside your Play & Freeze, however, I’ve got more homemade ice cream recipes and ice cream maker reviews at The Ice Cream Maker.