I'm scaring myself...

And the husband.

I'm actually considering making my own ice cream.

Yup, that was the sound of hell freezing over. Or maybe the husband keeling over. One of the two. Or maybe both.

It all started earlier this week when my friend Jennifer over at Cooking for Comfort made a milk chocolate ganache ice cream for Tuesdays with Dorie. I assumed she used an ice cream maker but she pointed out that she followed David Lebovitz's technique of making ice cream by hand (instructions found here). That planted the idea in my head, but only enough for me to mull over the possibility without actually following through on it.

Then I went to Formaggio. I ignored the case of Jeni's Ice Creams (new flavour: backyard mint!) and instead picked up a pint of Batch Salty Caramel Ice cream.

Batch Ice Creams from JP

It was a relative bargain for $8.75 a pint and it has no crap in it - no fillers, no preservatives, just organic milk and cream from a local dairy made by two women in Jamaica Plain who started up their business in spring of this year.

I love salty desserts, and I've been eyeing this ice cream for a while, so I brought a pint home with high expectations. I was sadly disappointed though - while the ice cream is rich, creamy, and technically delicious, it wasn't salty enough for me. That or else my taste buds really are dying as I age.

So the disappointment over another store bought ice cream and the ease with which ice creams can be made at home has spurred me into trying to make my own. I guess I really shouldn't be surprised, my mother used to make ice cream at home when I was young, but we did have a sturdy sized ice cream maker. She would make macapuno ice cream, which to this day is probably still my favourite flavour. She always told us kids that macapuno is young coconut and it came out of a bottle into the custard mix before freezing. I guess I never actually read the bottle because when I found it in an Asian supermarket as an adult, the description of macapuno is "mutant coconut"! Well, mutant or not, it's still delicious. Hmmm, maybe I should try making macapuno ice cream... potentially a future adventure. I decided I'll start out with a rocky road recipe since I'm a sucker for chocolate, marshmallow and nuts, and I'll move to David Lebovitz's Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream next. I'll report back on how successful or hairbrained this idea is...