Goodbye, Summer!

I don't know about where you are, but here in MA, it definitely feels like fall! We are having a gorgeous Labor Day weekend with temps in the 70's and there is nothing but sunshine predicted for the next week.

Since Labor Day is traditionally when you bid farewell to summer, we decided to give it a proper send-off.

What better way to say goodbye to summer than with ice cream!?

Not just any ice cream though... HOMEMADE ice cream! And I'm not talking about the type you make in an ice cream maker either. This stuff is hand-shaken.

All you need is cream, sugar, vanilla, chocolate syrup,
ice, salt and a few Ziploc bags.

First the girls helped me measure the cream, sugar and vanilla and then poured it into a small Ziploc bag.

Amanda added chocolate syrup to her bag for chocolate ice cream,
while Eva opted for vanilla.

Then we poured ice cubes and salt into a large Ziploc bag, put the smaller bags of ice cream inside and started shaking!



We took turns with this, but as you can probably guess, Amanda and Eva were more than happy to let Mama do the majority of the shaking labor. After we were finished, I read about one mom who had her kids take turns jumping on a trampoline while holding a bag. That sounds much easier!

Before long, we had two bags of soft serve ice cream!

Ta-Dah!

Each small bag yields about 1 cup of ice cream, or four 1/2 cup servings, so it was the perfect little treat.



Oh my gosh... was it ever good!!? Far better than anything you'd get in a store, and made with all natural ingredients. This recipe is a keeper!

We delivered a cup of ice cream to Daddy, who was working up on the hot roof,

and then sat and enjoyed our own cupfuls.

I'm sure we'll be doing this again soon. In fact, I've already been thinking of other flavors we could try making.

If you're interested in trying this at home, here's a link to the recipe I used.