Have you ever made ice cream in a bag before? I haven’t in years and the kids never have so we knew we had to put it on our “Old School” Summer Bucket List! Ice cream in a bag was just as much fun to make (and eat!) as we hoped it would be!
How to Make Ice Cream in a Bag:
- 1/2 cup of half and half (also called single cream and 10% coffee cream)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
- quart size plastic bag (good quality)
- gallon size plastic bag
- ice
- 4 tablespoons ice cream rock salt
Mix together the half and half, sugar, and vanilla in the quart size bag and seal it well. Then put the quart size bag inside the gallon bag and fill it with ice.
Pour about the ice cream salt on top of the ice and seal the gallon bag. Then shake!
It didn’t take long for the ice cream to start to solidify but the bags got really, really cold! We wore gloves to help keep our hands warm.
Once it gets to be the consistency of soft serve ice cream and feels thick through the bag then it is ready to eat!
Once ours was ready we grabbed spoons and ate the ice cream right out of the bag! Yummy and fun!
We are enjoying making our way through our “Old School” Summer Bucket List!
My kids would think the best part was eating it out of the bag! 🙂
Ha! They were definitely happy to!
I’m always scared to do this thinking the bags are going to puncture then I’ll have salty ice cream LOL.. hope you come by and share this on our #kidsinthekitchen linky http://lookwhatmomfound.com/2013/06/blueberries-right-from-the-garden-kidsinthekitchen.html
Ha! It’s sad I never even thought of that! Try the double zippered bags maybe!
Such cute pictures Megan! We did this last week for Virtual Book Club and loved it too. I surprisingly had never tried it. We dumped it out of the bag and added sprinkles and other toppings. So yummy! Such a perfectly simple activity that we will be trying again soon. Love your “old school” summer bucket list. We have several of your activities on our list too!
Ooooh! We should add sprinkles next time too!!! That’s a great idea!
Great idea. I need to Australian-ize it. What is half and half? What is ice-cream salt? Thanks for your help. 🙂
Half and half is what we put in our coffee–any type of cream or milk will work! And ice cream salt is rock salt. Any kind of larger size salt is awesome because it helps melt the ice and freeze the ice cream.
Thank you Anna for asking, I am French and had no idea either! Thanks to Megan answer it now looks sooo simple that we will be trying it !
Have fun!!!!!
This is a great project! My daughter did it in school during science class and the teacher talked to them about chemical reactions so it was educational (yet obviously engaging). The biggest surprise to my daughter was how the salt made it so cold. Thanks for the reminder so we can do this during a day when we “can’t think of anything to do” during the summer (not that that ever happens).
Cristina it really is full of learning! And was so much easier to do than I even thought it was going to be! I love that your daughter was able to understand some of the science behind it–what a fantastic experience! Have fun trying it at home!
I’m in the UK – what is half and half? Is it semi-skimmed milk? Or a cup of half full fat milk and half cream?
I am going to guess and say more like semi-skimmed milk. I think full fat milk and cream wouldn’t work as well.
Hi
Just to let you know Half and Half in the UK would be single cream. It could also be made using 50% double cream and 50% milk.
Semi-skimmed milk is close to your 2%milk (it actually has about 1.8%), full fat milk is approx 4% and skimmed milk is less than 1%fat.
Hope that helps someone
regards
Amanda
YAY!!! THANK YOU so much Amanda for the info!!! This will help!
Half-and-half, also known as half cream in the United Kingdom, is a simple blend of equal parts whole milk and light cream. It averages 10 to 12% fat, which is more than milk but less than light cream. Due to its lower fat content than cream, it can’t be whipped.
This sounds great! I wonder if it can be adapted to make dairy free ice cream. Any ideas?
Someone on FB said it worked great with almond milk too!
How fun! Looks like a perfect sunny day activity to cool off AND have a treat! We’ll just have to wait for the temps to go up a little here in Paris! 😉
Yes! Wishing you warm temps sooner rather than later! 🙂
If you don’t want to get ice cream on your hands eating out of the bag, a zip lock bag makes a great emergency pastry bag by simply snipping one corner off with a pair of scissors. Then the ice cream can be squeezed into a bowl or a cone with ease…
Great idea!
This is a great activity for kids, especially in the warmer months!
I think this would be a great learning opportunity, too. As the kids shake up the bags, talk to them about how the salt changes the properties of the ice (and melting water) to help the ice cream freeze. You can talk about states of matter, freezing points, etc.
I run a blog and one of the features is family tech/STEM. I’m super inspired by this activity and I’m going to write a post about how to incorporate the educational aspect. It’s time for some tasty teaching! Thanks for the great idea, and I’ll totally back-link to you!
I made this today with my girls but somehow the salt had permeated into the bag of cream and we had salty ice cream. Any suggestion as to why?
Oh no! Maybe try a “freezer” bag instead of a “storage” bag.
If you still can’t keep it from becoming salty, try adding caramel and having salted caramel ice cream.