My Uncle Elmer's favorite holiday was New Years Day—not because he enjoyed nursing a hangover from the previous night's festivities, or even because he savored the shining promise of every new revolution of the Earth around the sun… No, my uncle loved New Years Day because it was just about as far on the calendar as you could get from the 4th of July … And because January 1st is always bone chilling cold, the kind of holiday nobody in their right mind would even think about screaming for ice cream…
Uncle Elmer was a big rig mechanic employed by Standard Oil. He worked on tanker truck engines all day long in a big, mercilessly unshaded sheet metal hangar built on blacktop that literally bubbled and stuck to his shoes on particularly miserable summer days. The average temperature inside the hangar was a balmy 100+ degrees from June through September…
But he made really good money there, which he put to extravagant use equipping his fancy ranch-style house in our small town's only "subdivision" with glorious, newly available, central air –conditioning. Arriving home from a long, hot day at work was, for him, what those Swedish guys must feel sliding from a suffocating sauna into a waiting pool of ice water…
His less fortunate relatives (my family at the top of the list) openly coveted that sweet, mechanical coolness, and every summer birthday, anniversary – and, of course, the 4th of July – got automatically staged at his house. Which he didn't mind so much, even when he got stuck with the food bill. Like I said, he made good money …
Everything changed the year my aunt surprised him with his very own ice cream maker. He'd always wanted one. He had fond memories of his father hand-cranking gallons of the fluffy white stuff for holiday celebrations when he was a kid. Unfortunately for him, when he reminisced aloud about those sweet childhood memories, his storytelling always lingered lovingly on the hand crank itself, the endless turning, the children's anticipation, his father's brawny bicep moving up and down and round and round…
His wife bought him a hand-cranked model. Ice cream makers with electric motors were available by then, be he always waxed eloquent on the muscle-driven variety, so that's what she bought him.
And summer holidays became hell. Making ice cream in a 1970's hand-cranked device is a messy process requiring ice, rock salt, milk, sugar, eggs, and seemingly endless cranking, cranking, cranking… It's loud, too. My aunt, the ever-gracious hostess of all family events held in her home, would have none of that in her house. Ice cream making was a process relegated to the garage…
Which was not air-conditioned. Which, by July, maintained a mean temperature well in excess of 100 degrees…
My Uncle Elmer would tough out the first half hour or so with a smile on his face. He'd offer us kids a turn rotating the crank, which, in that first 30 minutes, turns fairly easily, because the milk is still just milk. Once the ice and salt did their jobs, though, and the cream began to form, cranking got progressively more difficult. By the time real ice cream appeared, we party-goers always found ourselves milling as far away from the attached garage as we could get without leaving the house, politely disregarding the huffing, puffing, cussing and occasional exclamations of pain filtering under the closed garage door.
This would continue, it seemed, for hours on end. But eventually, the grinding and complaining would stop, the door leading from the garage into the house would open, and Uncle Elmer would emerge, breathing hard, drenched in sweat, clutching a white plastic bowl containing about a gallon of sweet, vanilla magic…
Which we fell on like locusts. What took him hours to create we devoured in minutes, shoveling quick, heaping spoonfuls of white frozen goodness into kid-mouths already chilled by his expensive central air…
Like I said, My Uncle Elmer's favorite holiday was New Years Day…
Here’s three fantastic vegan ice cream recipes. If you've invested in one of those newfangled fancy electric ice cream makers (which I saw on clearance recently for more than $50.00 – what, are you made of money?), the first recipe is for you. The others can be made by anybody using standard-issue kitchen equipment. All three are quick, easy and delicious – and 100% vegan! Enjoy!
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups almond milk, divided
2 ripe bananas
2 heaping tablespoons cocoa powder
2 Tablespoons sugar
Instructions:
1. In a microwave-safe bowl, thoroughly whisk together 1/2 cup almond milk, the cocoa powder, and the sugar. Microwave for 40 seconds and then stir.
2. Place bananas and 1 cup almond milk into a blender. Add the cocoa mixture and puree for about 10 seconds.
3. Pour into ice cream maker and process for 20 minutes or until thick.
4. Serve immediately for a soft-serve consistency, or freeze to serve later as hard ice cream.
Ingredients:
2 bananas, cut into chunks, then frozen
3 Tablespoons creamy peanut butter
3 Tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon agave nectar
Directions:
1. Blend frozen banana chunks, peanut butter and cocoa powder together in a food processor until smooth. Don't worry if your bananas go through a crumbly phase from being hard-frozen. Just scrape down the sides and keep blending till things smooth out.
2. Add agave nectar to taste. Serve immediately!
Ingredients:
3 cups raw cashews, soaked in water for 3-4 hours
1 1/2 cups shredded, unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
2 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup agave nectar or maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
1. In a high speed blender, puree all ingredients until smooth. Keep scraping the coconut flakes down the sides until they are mostly incorporated.
2. Pour into a freezer safe container. Put the container in an ice bath until cold.
3. Move the container to the freezer. Stir every 30 minutes until frozen.