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s/o is it cheaper to make your own ice cream?


Halcyon
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Okay, so my boys love ice cream. It's the only real store treat i buy for them, but I hate the chemicals and I hate the rising price and shrinking package size. I have recently started baking my own bread with a machine DH bought for $2 at a garage sale (woot!) and we've loved having fresh bread....and it's cheaper and healthier. So should I buy an ice cream machine? My boys easily go through 2 pseudo half gallons containers a week (you know, those container that are rectangular, that USED to be 1/2 gallons but are now like...a quart and a half?) so even when I buy on sale, that's probably $20 a month.

 

Is the cost of cream just too high to justify? I don't ever buy cream, so I need to look and see. Does anyone own an ice cream machine? Here's the one I am eyeing http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-ICE-30BC-Indulgence-2-Quart-Automatic/dp/B0006ONQOC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359517867&sr=8-1&keywords=ice+cream+maker

 

or perhaps the slightly cheaper, older version that is about 52 dollars.

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I rarely buy ice cream, but if I do, it's only the really good stuff that doesn't have weird stuff like cellulose in it. If I buy the cream from Costco, I think it is somewhat cheaper than store-bought premium stuff. It would be more expensive if I were limited to buying those tiny cartons of cream at the grocery store.

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Homemade ice cream is special! I refuse to buy anything with HFCS, and avoiding that ingredient has become harder, as manufacturers increasingly hide behind euphemistic verbiage. (Wish I could find the references; there were some interesting articles some time back about this.)

 

However, the bread costs are more favorable. I buy only 20 lb. at a time (no storage space for more) of organic, unbleached wheat flour for $11.00 at Costco. For us, bread machine loaves are too small -- barely enough for one set of sandwiches. I now make two loaves at a time (regular oven), using a stand mixer to knead the dough. The start-to-finish time turned out to be less than that required by a bread machine. (Machine = 3 hrs. 40 min. Myself = under 3 hrs.) Hands-on-time is very little. I priced out loaves of one particular "plain" recipe, and was pleased with little over $1.00 per loaf.

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I own that ice cream maker and love it.

 

I started making our own ice cream when DS had multiple food allergies. It was nice controlling all the ingredients.

 

But I never found it to be any cheaper.

 

Now that DS has outgrown most of his food allergies, I can use real cream but it is still more expensive to make than to buy.

 

 

The advantages to making your own ice cream:

 

You can play around with different flavors and make ones that are not easily found at the store. (Like salted caramel.)

 

If you do make exotic flavors, which tend to only be available in specialty stores in small quantities, then it might be cheaper.

 

You can control the ingredients.

 

We find homemade ice cream to be more satisfying and more filling so tend to eat less of it.

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It's nice to have one since it's such a good treat. I think there are ways to make it less fatty too. But yeah, the cost of the ingredients is just as high as the store bought ice cream and higher definitely when you consider that you end up with cream left over and have to come up with a use for it... or, at least, I always seem to.

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Hmmm. Need to decide. There is So much junk in the store bought icecream.

 

If you feel that ice cream is a staple or regular feature in your dessert/snack line up, you are probably better off economically with the store stuff.

 

If ice cream is a treat to be savored, then make it on occasion.

 

Another idea is to make sorbets or ices.

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Another "negative" for me making ice cream is that we never, ever have room in the freezer to place a cannister. Space-guzzling item! How do you all deal with this problem?

 

 

I opted to pay more for a machine that doesn't require a frozen canister--just put in the ingrdients and start.

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We have an ice cream maker, but it's a novelty, and definitely doesn't save us money to make our own.

 

We only buy Breyer's ice cream. Ingredients on the Vanilla Bean:

 

milk, cream, sugar, tara gum, natural flavor

 

I can live with that. Dd makes brownie bites, or cake pops, in her cake pop maker, and we throw a couple in our ice cream bowl!

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Not the stuff I make. I figure if I'm taking the time to do it, I'm going to do it right! That means real cream, tons of eggs, quality add ins, real vanilla beans, etc. I don't skimp when I'm doing homemade. In the end it costs more and takes TONS more time. But oh the taste! It's like a thousand little baby angels dancing on your tongue. :drool5:

 

If I can plug a friends blog: http://www.pbpickles.com/

Last summer she did a 30 day marathon of seriously cool ice cream recipes.

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Bread is a lot cheaper to make at home, but I spend more on homemade ice cream. Those price increases at the store reflect how expensive the ingredients have become. If you like the store bought ice cream, save yourself some money and hassle and buy that.

 

I have a machine that uses salt. Most folks don't want them anymore, but where I live the salt is easy to find. I don't have to clear out extra freezer space for a bowl, and it makes plenty of ice cream at once. I only have to clear freezer space for ice cream in the end.

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Is it more expensive? Yes. Why? Because your're using real cream and eggs.

 

It's the equivalent of the store brand ice cream -- and some super high quality brand. And homemade is even better than the high quality brand. The custard is super easy to make, and elevates it into the angelic.

 

Don't forget tot take into consideration that they aren't even allowed to call some ice creams Ice Cream anymore, they're so low on the cream they're calling them dairy desserts.

 

This is by far the best Ice Cream book

 

 

41dyg%2BafqzL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

 

 

 

And Lebovitz's blog is ahhh mazing.

 

 

I have a cuisnart ice cream maker, and I need to buy a separate bowl so I can make two at a time. You CANNOT make two batches in one bowl. You can't. It has to go back in the freezer for 24 hours before the next batch can be frozen.

 

IN the summer, I make all my icecream bases in wide mouth quart jars and let them chill (chilling is VERY important) and this is what it looks like

 

 

waitingtobeicecream.JPG

 

 

Flavors : Vietnamese Coffee, two peach, one strawberry yogurt. All *awesome*.

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I tried to answer this last night when the board crashed, so I feel I must chime in on homemade ice cream, even though you already have plenty of answers (and we all seem to agree).

 

Our local, high-quality, full half-gallon ice cream has been priced at $2.98 since summer. I cannot beat that significantly with homemade, even when the cream is on sale. And definitely not when the cream is not on sale. But homemade sure tastes good and we don't have the problem of trying to store it for more than a day or two. I usually transfer it to a tupperware container that fits nicely in the freezer.

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It is much cheaper for me because we usually make dairy free. Unfortunately, my dairy free kid has rejected all of my recipes so far. :glare: I went to buy regular premium ice cream last night and nothing was on sale! I thought it would be just as cheap to make my own so I bought a big thing of cream and I'll see how it is. Usually we buy store bought for the dairy kids and I've been trying homemade recipes for my non-dairy kid. The cream wasn't that expensive at all, I already have tons of vanilla beans, and I'll use milk that we use so slowly that it often goes bad, so I'm really not going to be out much money except the cream.

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We had an ice cream maker that ended up broken. I never thought the ice cream turned out that great and like Wendy said, it didn't store for that long. Needless to say, I haven't bought a new one. I think it has the potential of being very yummy, we just never figured it out.

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Cream is SO expensive if you buy it from the grocery store. I'm sure you can find somewhere cheaper to buy it.

 

Homemade ice cream? Heavenly! Especially fruit flavor, when you eat it before the fruit freezes! OH MY GOLLY! Plain old strawberry is the best, IMO. Fresh strawberries.. mmmm!

 

My ice cream maker, however, is not big enough to make enough to serve our whole family.

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This is by far the best Ice Cream book

 

 

41dyg%2BafqzL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

 

 

 

 

Seconded. I recently made the green tea ice cream from this book, and it was really lovely. I'm trying not to think about the expense, given the cost of the cream, eggs, and matcha powder, but I'm pretty sure it was worth it.

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Okay, so my boys love ice cream. It's the only real store treat i buy for them, but I hate the chemicals and I hate the rising price and shrinking package size. I have recently started baking my own bread with a machine DH bought for $2 at a garage sale (woot!) and we've loved having fresh bread....and it's cheaper and healthier. So should I buy an ice cream machine? My boys easily go through 2 pseudo half gallons containers a week (you know, those container that are rectangular, that USED to be 1/2 gallons but are now like...a quart and a half?) so even when I buy on sale, that's probably $20 a month.

 

Is the cost of cream just too high to justify? I don't ever buy cream, so I need to look and see. Does anyone own an ice cream machine? Here's the one I am eyeing http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-ICE-30BC-Indulgence-2-Quart-Automatic/dp/B0006ONQOC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359517867&sr=8-1&keywords=ice+cream+maker

 

or perhaps the slightly cheaper, older version that is about 52 dollars.

 

 

I just got that ice cream maker ( our 2nd) for $15 at Goodwill!!!!

 

I don't know if it is cheaper to make your own buit is a lot more fun.

 

We get ice cream fairly in expensively waiting for sales and using coupons.

 

 

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IT is way cheaper for us. We have a house cow, so the milk and cream is free. Plus we eat less ice cream. one scoop each, and the whole lot is gone,whereas if I by a 4L tub of ice cream we will eat it all in 3 sittings. Here a middle range brand of ice cream costs around $12 for 4L.

the recipe I use is

250 ml milk

150 ml cream (or less)

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

flavour

blend in blender then place in ice cream machine.

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This is the one I have, and I use Ben and Jerry's ice cream recipe book. I don't really like ice cream from the store, but homemade is sooooo good.

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I'm so delighted by the idea of a house cow I can hardly stand myself. I imagine she doesn't really live in the house, but I'm still charmed. And reminded of that PSA that ran on Canadian tv some years ago:

.

 

 

 

No no no. She doesn't live in the house :svengo: . It is the term used when someone keeps a cow for the sole purpose of producing milk for their household.

She is safely in the paddock eating hay. Her name is Star and she is a jersey.

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I got an ice cream maker for Christmas. We kept it one the stipulation that we would only eat homemade ice cream. We needed to cut ice cream eating --dh buys lots of cheap ice cream on sale.

 

For New Years I made super premium stuff, cooking a custard made with egg yolks and cream and flavors. It was really good. And super rich--you couldn't eat more than a couple of spoonfuls (well I couldn't). It was not cheaper to make.

 

I've since made some vegan ice creams. I've made mango, banana and chocolate. Those are not as rich. Unsweetened coconut milk is the base. I believe this is cheaper than the vegan ice creams at the store. But this is not cheaper than the cheap ice cream dh was buying.

 

Most ice cream makers make a quart or less at a time. So you might save because you are eating less, since making it takes time.

 

I feel like we are saving our selves from the junk in the cheap ice cream. And we are saving because we are consuming less in general.

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Ok, I'm intrigued by finding cheaper heavy cream. I buy it regularly, but I have yet to find it cheaper than the grocery store. Maybe this is a stupid question, but where else do they sell heavy cream?

 

Not a stupid question. I actualLy googled this very question last night.

 

Or maybe we're both asking a stupid question. Lol.

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Guest submarines

We make ice cream in our blender. It is more like frozen yogurt or gelato in texture, but it is quick to make and delicious. It tastes more like ice cream if I make it with heavy cream instead of milk or water. I'm not sure if it saves money, but it is delicious, quick to make, and I control the ingredients. It is cheaper than the ice creams that use only natural ingredients.

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Seconded. I recently made the green tea ice cream from this book, and it was really lovely. I'm trying not to think about the expense, given the cost of the cream, eggs, and matcha powder, but I'm pretty sure it was worth it.

 

Try the chocolate chip mint. *swoon* It got to the point where my mint was actually over picked! (which, if you know anything about mint, is near impossible because it just grows so darned fast!) The real mint is amazing because it has this smell that just glorious, not one flat note like the jars.

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It depends on what ice cream you buy. I only buy Ben & Jerry's and other brands that use only natural ingredients. Those are expensive.

 

Besides when you make your own you can come up with your own flavors. My boys love picking out what concoction to come up with.

 

Every other weekend we take turns picking our ice cream to make. So on average we make ice cream twice a month. Although, I might start making it once a week since my boys need more calories. We'll see.

 

The last flavor we made was toffee flavor base with chunks of chocolate and sliced almonds.

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One more thing- keep your eyes out for one on Craigslist. I got mine for like $20 and its a double bowl Culisinart! People frequently get rid of items Ike that. Kitchen aid has one that fits on your mixer that is also a freezer bowl if you are worried about storage space. Many people buy two bowls to have one to rotate or to make two bowls at once.

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