Easy Ice Cream (no ice cream maker needed)

The last week has been very hectic, so I haven't had time to really cook, let alone post anything. There is some serious cooking planned for the Thanksgiving weekend, however, so I how to have many recipes coming your way soon.

In the meantime, here is a quick little recipe for ice cream to tide you over until the next post. This recipe was my grandmother's recipe and is still a huge success. I posted it to Allrecipes.com a long time ago and you can see some pictures that people have uploaded of their various flavors.

Easy Ice Cream

 

The basic ingredients are very simple: 

* 4 egg whites (these are not cooked in the recipe, so if you want to be careful then used packaged pasteurized egg whites)

* 2/3 cups of sour cream (you can use low/non-fat you can also use plain or vanilla yogurt).

* 1/2 cup of white sugar (the Splenda equivalent also works)

* 1 tsp vanilla extract

To prepare the ice cream: 

1. In a large glass or metal mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Gradually add white sugar and vanilla, continuing to beat until soft peaks form. Carefully fold in sour cream until well blended. Fold in any additional flavorings or goodies at this time. 
2. Place the mixture into the freezer and stir every 30 minutes or so until frozen. This can be made without stirring, but the texture will be icy rather than creamy. If you have an ice cream maker, you can put the ice cream mixture in the maker, and follow the manufacturer's instructions.

 And now for the interesting part: 

You can use this recipe, as is, to make plain ice cream. But if we're being perfectly honest, plain ice cream is a little boring. The trick to this recipe is that you can add ingredients to make it any way you like it. Here are some options:

- soak raisins in rum and add both the raisins and the rum to the ice cream.

- add instant coffee or cocoa powder to the mix.

- add mint extract and chocolate chips or broken sandwich cookies

- mix in fruit of various flavors