Girl Scouts Don't Need to Buy Ice Cream When They Can Make Their Own

Enjoying sundaes on Sunday.

Finally, after months of planning and more bureaucratic red tape than it takes to start a small business, we had our first official Girl Scout meeting.

I won’t bore you with all the nitty gritty involved in getting a troop started. But it involved background checks, online tutorials, hours of in-person training and so much email back and forth, I had to start separate accounts to keep it all straight.

But now that we’re official – troop number and everything – I’m excited to be part of this enthusiastic group of girls and leaders.

We have more than 20 girls in our Daisy troop already and, thankfully, six co-leaders to manage the whole endeavor.

On Sunday, we met with about 17 of the girls. They’re only Daisy Scouts for three short months over the summer (they’ll be Brownies in the fall), so we’re not investing much in the Daisy materials.

Did I mention there are Girl Scout stores that I could literally waste spend hundreds of dollars on gear, learning materials and accessories?

We’ve opted instead to spend the summer having fun and introducing our girls to the core Girl Scouts concepts. On Sunday, we had the girls make their own ice cream in a bag (recipe below). They also learned a new song, wrote cards to someone special in their lives and talked about all the attributes of sisters & friends.

Not a bad start. On Monday, we march in the Oak Park Fourth of July Parade.

Ice Cream in a Bag

What you need:

Ice cream salt
Ice
Gallon-sized zip baggies
Sandwich-sized zip baggies
Half & half
Sugar
Vanilla

Instructions:

Fill each sandwich baggie with a cup of half & half; two tablespoons of sugar; and a half teaspoon of vanilla.

Place sandwich bag inside the gallon zip bag, fill about 3/4 full of ice and add 1/2 cup of ice cream salt. Shake for five minutes and you’ll have a frozen treat.

Tips: 

I like to cut the ends off the baggies and squeeze the ice cream in a cup. Some like to eat it out of the bag, but the baggie is coated with salt at this point and the transfer is inevitable. I’m not a fan of salty ice cream.

You can add chocolate syrup and others have added things like crushed cookies into the mix before shaking. But I prefer to let others add their toppings afterward.
Don’t cheap out on the baggies. They’ll leak. I learned this the hard way.

Table salt can be substituted, but it’s not as effective at freezing the dairy, so I’ve sometimes ended up with more of a milkshake consistency.

I’ve also heard that milk is just fine. But I’ve not tried it because this is one of only a handful of excuses I have left to buy half & half.