Ice Cream In a Bag

As promised in my post At Home Learning I mentioned one of our science experiments was ice cream in a bag. As promised, here is my post on ice cream in a bag.

When I was younger I would go to summer camp for Girl Scouts. It was always SO stinking HOT. Back then the heat didn’t bother me as much, but even then I would have much rather been in air conditioning. Don’t get me wrong, I always had fun swimming, canoeing, hiking, crafting, making new friends etc, but man did I miss my A/C! One summer we got to make ice cream in a bag. Y’all I thought it was the coolest thing ever and I was OBSESSED for the longest. Then I got older and I forgot about it because we had an ice cream maker that you just plugged in and after adding all the ingredients, it did all the hard work!

Then I had kids. We do not have an ice cream maker. We have a snow cone machine the kids love, but no ice cream maker. I was also trying to think of different fun things we could do while the kids were home from school due to school closures. Enter in ice cream in a bag! I found a ton of different recipes on Pinterest. I couldn’t remember exact amounts of things so I checked Pinterest. Most call for half and half but we didn’t have half and half so let the experimenting begin!

We had 1% milk on hand and coffee creamer. You know, because Mama can’t live without coffee and sometimes I like to pretend I’m drinking an expensive, fancy coffee from a certain coffee store. I had several different flavors on hand: Sweet Cream, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and Vanilla were the ones we settled on using. For our ice cream that would be made with the milk, we decided on using the following extracts to flavor it: Vanilla, Lemon, and Root Beer.

To make your ice cream in a bag you will need: milk of some sort (I imagine any milk would work but some may not be as creamy as others), extracts, ice, sugar, salt (I recommend rock salt), and 2 different sized Ziploc bags (1 small and 1 larger). Yes I happened to have rock salt in the house because I had wanted to do this previously with the kids but just never got around to it.

Okay, you have all your ingredients so let’s get started.

I like to measure all my ingredients out first so I would get:

1 Cup of milk (half and half, milk, creamer, etc)

1 1/2 teaspoons of extract

1 tablespoon of sugar

I hold off on the ice and salt until I’m ready for that part. Empty each of the above ingredients into your small Ziploc bag. If you have it pre-measured you can let each kiddo take a turn putting an ingredient in the bag. If your kids are older they can probably measure out the ingredients themselves. For our bags with coffee creamer I didn’t add any extracts. They were already flavored.

After all ingredients are in the bag, try to get out as much air as possible and seal the bag.

Now you will get your larger Ziploc bag. Fill it halfway with ice and add in your salt. If it is a gallon bag, I would recommend 1/4 cup of rock salt. If it is smaller, you may need to adjust the amount of rock salt.

Now you will add your tightly sealed small bag to the larger bag. If you are concerned about leaking from the smaller bag or getting salt in your ice cream, you can double bag your small bag. I did this just because my kiddos are smaller and I was worried they would end up putting a hole in the smaller bag. Once the smaller bag is in the larger bag, fill the rest of the large bag with ice, leaving enough room to tightly seal your larger bag.

I covered the bags with hand towels and baby towels so the kids could shake away without getting their hands too cold! Let those kiddos shake away! It burns some of their energy, they get a workout, and my kiddos had a great time doing it! We shook them until the ice cream started to firm up. Your ice cream won’t get as firm as store bought ice cream. That’s part of what I LOVE about homemade ice cream!

Once your ice cream has firmed up, take the small bag out of the large bag. I like to wipe my smaller bag down at this point to get the salt off of the bag. I’ve already got the hand towel there to do so! You will want to eat the ice cream immediately as it will melt quickly. If you don’t plan to eat it immediately you can place it in the freezer to help keep it firm.

This ice cream can be eaten straight out of the bag with a spoon. I got small cups and we placed each ice cream in cups for everyone to try. This recipe doesn’t make much ice cream but since we had 6 bags to try I think each kiddo got plenty of ice cream! As a side note, we did this outside so if a bag busted it didn’t matter. After the kids were done testing their ice cream they got to run around to burn off that sugar! If you are looking for a healthy homemade ice cream, this isn’t it!

After trying all the flavors, the vanilla extract and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup creamer ice cream were the favorites. The lemon extract one was TERRIBLE! The ice creams made with the coffee creamers were thicker and creamier.

Have fun and continue making those fun memories with your kids!