Shake It, Make It Ice Cream in a Bag

Ice cream and strawberries.

A few years ago for my son’s birthday, we came across this entertaining and tasty kid-friendly activity: Homemade ice cream in a bag. I’m not sure we’ve tried it again, until Saturday.

We gathered all the fixins to do this at our block party over the weekend. There are very few ingredients in the finished bowl – half & half, sugar and vanilla.

Yet it takes quite a bit of work for each single scoop: about five minutes of shaking to be more precise. That didn’t deter many of the kids who participated. They seemed to enjoy the experience and learning how to make their own ice cream. For an extra treat, I even broke out the last bit of frozen strawberries from The Farm this spring. Wow. Those sure held up nicely in the freezer.

Afternoon game of ice cream toss.

My whole household, however, missed out completely. I was too busy helping others shake up their frozen treats. Sim, who ducked out to go to the 2nd Annual Oak Park Microbrew Review (sold out this year!), and the kids, who were way too busy playing with their new neighbor friends, also missed out.

So we shook up our ice cream for our after-lunch treat on Sunday.

Find a good basic recipe and instructions here at Kaboose. You can see from the photos that we’re wearing gloves and oven mitts. The bag with ice and rock salt gets coooold, even for adult hands. The gloves are recommended. So is doing this on a hot day as a way to really cool off.