As Good as it Gets!
 

Yesterday, responding to the request of an old friend, terminally ill and a bit depressed, we used a recent acquisition, one of those Cuisinart counter top ice cream makers (No, not purchased, but a gift) which requires "pre-freezing" the insulated core to make "home-made" peach ice cream.

My wife pulled out her mother's old family recipe, an uncooked version based on Half & Half, "Eagle Brand", good vanilla (or better, a bean), sugar to taste and a half dozen eggs to the half gallon (a certifiable artery-clogger). It's peach season here, allowing plenty of crushed and chopped peaches for flavor. We made a double recipe, first the half gallon for the friend, delivered it, re-froze the core and ran the other batch for us.

Maybe it was the aroma of the fresh tree-ripened peaches, but I don't recall much in the way of dessert which ever "topped" this.

While the ice cream maker came with a recipe for a frozen blend of fat free unsweetened yogurt, artificial sweetener, and pureed fruit, health constraints aside, I think I'll stay with the artery clogger.

Brings back memories of growing up. My father's family really liked peach ice cream. Of course it had to be homemade, in the backyard, using an ice cream freezer and fresh peaches. In those years people used the handcranked version of ice cream maker that required lots of crushed ice. Your countertop Cuisinart sounds quite a convenience, though you folks must miss out on the heat of a backyard in August and hungry and impatient relatives standing around watching.

I don't know about ice cream in general, but if you happened to leave a half-empty can of Eagle Brand condensed milk in my vicinity, you'd never get it back. ;)

My parents had a hand-cranked one that they would dig out once in a blue moon. Ice and rock salt, and crank the darn thing for what seemed like decades.

Um, excuse me, but can we please have the recipe? :D I've got one of those monsters (the kind that cools itself) and peach season is quickly approaching and the wife loves peach.

That sounds SOOO delicious. We'll be awaiting the recipe.

Bobette

1/2 gallon Homemade peach ice cream for "counter top" or similar machines, Cuisinart, etc.- a "medium" fat and calorie version (Well, sort of, as opposed to heavy cream and egg yolks)

Beat 3 eggs
Add and mix thoroughly....
1/2 can Eagle Brand.
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbs good vanilla
1 quart half & half
1-2 cups pureed ripe peaches
Juice of 1 lemon

Start freezing process.

At about the halfway point, add up to 2 cups of diced peaches mixed with 1/2 cup powdered sugar. The diced peaches should have been mixed with the sugar and allowed to sit for an hour before adding to the freezer. The late addition prevents the diced peaches from being crushed in the freezing process.

Serve with crisp Amaretto cookies or wafers.

One school of thought advocates adding some sliced toasted almonds fortified by mixing with a little almond extract, but classicists are troubled by such adulterations. I suspect that making a heavy cooked syrup of almonds, Amaretto, sugar and almond extract to serve as a topping would satisfy those screaming for refinement.

Then there are the cooked "custard" variants of yesteryear, favored by my grandmother, who kept rock salt, not for the front steps, but for the churn, and had a force of churners on hand for such occasions.

Thank TM, I just sent it to some of my friends.

Bobette

I too have fond memories of homemade peach ice cream in the heat of summer. My mom adored it. Even though I ended up working the ice cream maker, manual of course, it was still wonderful when I could stop cranking and enjoy the fruits of my labor. Thanks for the memory refresh!

When I was 6 or 7 I was too small to crank the freezer, so I got to sit on top of it to help hold it still...good times. ^

I didn't mind doing the cranking (hot August or not) because I got to lick the dasher! Oh, if only I/we could go back to those wonderful, peaceful days.

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That brought a smile to my face. I had forgotten how they bribed me ;). Thanks. ^

A while back my 80-year-old mom decided to have a rummage sale and put the old family ice cream maker (hand crank) out in the garage with a price tag on it. My sister saw it, rescued it, and thus preserved our opportunity to relive our own homemade ice cream memories. We never added peaches and it was more of a Christmas / New Years treat rather than summer. But the peaches sound heavenly. Think I'll give it a try (with the almond sauce as the family recipe for fresh peach pie has always included a dash of almond flavoring).

This brings back memories of making ice cream On Fourth of July as a kid. My Mom's recipe was pretty close to the one above.

My Dad would add the ice and salt as needed and we kids would be required to do at least 100 turns on the crank.(there were 8 of us so plenty of cheap labor) We figured out if you get your cranking done in the beginning it is much easier than later as the ice cream gets pretty stiff towards the last coupla hundred cranks.