ice cream in a bag

i am super miserable with my first round of allergies this season. my darling decided with it being so warm wednesday and thursday to open windows in our house. flowers have just bloomed though and i could feel the beginnings of my agony welling up. so, now i have a bit of a sore throat from not being able to breath through my nose. what would feel better than some cold ice cream. but, i have none in my freezer. i remember making ice cream in coffee cans camping as a kid and figured there had to be a way to make some myself without an ice cream maker. enter my laptop and the handy dandy internet. how did i ever survive without out the internet and better yet what did my mom do without it. i looked up ice cream with a coffee can, and found this recipe for making ice cream in plastic bags. if you want a recipe for making it in a coffee can, which we called kick the can, try here. i made a few changes, and it worked out fine.
i combined 1 % milk, imitation vanilla extract(as a recovering alcoholic i try to avoid using real extracts as they tend to be high in alcohol whereas the fake stuff often isn't.) and less than the called for sugar hoping to cut back some by using a lower fat milk and less sugar. i used a sandwhich bag instead of a pint bag. here's my mixed baggie.
i used a pint size instead of gallon bag because it was all i had. i also substituted kosher salt for the rock salt and used half a tray of ice. ready to shake, shake, shake.
and the result


so maybe, i took it out before it was completely done; but it was yummy. not as creamy as it would have been with half and half or cream but also not as fattening.
i made it as the recipe stated, so it really was only about a scoop full. i wanted more so i decided to change the flavor. this time i tried peppermint by switching the vanilla extract with peppermint extract and adding a bit of red food color to give it a pink color. i also doubled the recipe to make more ice cream.

even doubling the recipe, it really only took about 5 minutes.

super refreshing. its also nice since it seems the only time you can find peppermint ice cream is at the holidays. peppermint is one of my favorite flavors if you haven't figured that out from some of my earlier posts. this time i also took the bags and put them in a plastic container to shake it. i found the bags get cold too quickly and literally hurt my hands not from being heavy but from the coldness. i also placed the extra ice cream in the fridge to eat tomorrow. now, i want to try chocolate which i bet would work well with chocolate milk. also, the pics look soupier than the ice cream really was. its just because i had my camera in another room and had to get it to take the pics. by the time everything was set up, the ice cream melted a bit.