If you don't like the weather... Just wait a minute.

The last two days have been 30C or more so whats the temperature today.... 16C and raining. As far as I can tell we have been getting more rain up here on the hill than most of the Melbourne bloggers who have been despairing over the fact that they haven't had any rain since Christmas. I won't say that we have had a lot of rain but we certainly have had enough that I haven't had to get up to water for about 4 weeks or so.

With the last two days of heat I wasn't willing to wait on the possibility of rain this morning so I got up and watered.... Just as I finished it started to give some good solid rain drops and less than an hour later we had set in rain that now at 3pm is still going strong..Yay Me.

So anyway back to some semblance of a point. I made icecream... I don't own an icecream maker and my husband is dairy free at the moment and he is the main person who eats icecream in this house. So why did I decide to make Icecream?

Recently he decided to test his dairy free status due to a hankering for icecream. The results of the experiment did not give great results so I decided I had better find a solution so he doesn't feel tempted to try again.

I scoured the Internet and came up with this recipe by The Amish Cook
10 Cups Milk
7 Eggs
3 1/2 Cups Sugar
4 Tsp Vanilla
1 Tsp Salt

Beat Eggs, then add remaining ingredients and mix. Pour into the freezer and freeze. Enjoy

Please note for readers in countries where Salmonella in uncooked eggs is a concern this is not the recipe for you.


I decided that looked reasonably easy to modify and achievable with the items that I had around the house so I gave it a whirl. So what did I do?

2 tins of Light Coconut Milk
3 Eggs
1 1/2 Cups Sugar
1 Tsp Orange Essence
3 Oranges of Orange juice
1/2 Tsp Salt

I chucked it all in the stand mixer bowl and mixed thoroughly.

Then moved the bowl into the freezer and every half hour scraped the solidified bits off the side of the bowl and mixed again until I had slush. Once I created slush I continued the process every hour until it becomes a reasonably solid mass even after whipping.

At this point if you are thinking more than I was at the time you whip it up with the stand mixer again and put the bowl and container that you are going to keep it in in the freezer for another hour.

If your brain is in neutral you simply scrape the stuff out of the bowl into the 30C plastic container and for a split second curse yourself while moving everything to the freezer as fast as humanly possible hoping that it isn't all going to defrost and freeze as a solid block before the temperature of the container comes down to a reasonable level.

As you can see from the photo it didn't all defrost so I got lucky.

Even after freezing overnight at this point you can still get it out of the container... it hasn't melded into a solid block of ice.


Ok so down to the post mortem... What would I change?

Next time I will do a little more research about tastes that blend well with Coconut the Orange essence is OK but certainly not a taste sensation in my book. I think I am looking for more tart tastes but I didn't grow up with a lot of coconut milk s I am really not sure. Feel free to give any suggestions that you can think of for me to try in the future as I am a little stuck.

I will start playing with the amount of sugar, next try will be 1C as I personally find it very sweet made according to the recipe above of course this may affect the freezing properties although I think the eggs are the main component in this respect.

Freeze the storage container so I don't end up with a 5mm section of solid iced cream around the edge.