Ice Cream!!!

I went to visit with some friends this afternoon and we had a fabulous feast.

We had nori rolls, "pasta" with pesto sauce, onion bread, sunflower cheese, stuffed baby peppers (with the sunflower cheese), salad, and for dessert we had puchased raw gourmet truffles, home made raw brownie bites and ICE CREAM!!!

It's getting late and I have work tomorrow so I'll focus tonight's post on my favorite part of the day ... the ice cream.

I haven't made ice cream since I was a little kid.  I remember it was such an ordeal we really didn't do it all that often, but I remember sitting outside with my dad where we had an old time ice cream maker (yikes, might have even been one you had to crank ...).  It required rock salt and ice in order to turn the milky mixture into ice cream and it seemed to take forever.

A couple weeks ago, I purchased the Cuisinart Ice Cream maker.  I had been a bit busy on the weekends so I never got around to tackling the ice cream.  I decided I wanted to make this mint chocolate ice cream for my first attempt. 

I followed the recipe to the letter except we used cashews instead of brazil nuts.  I've had cashew ice cream before at Pure Food and Wine and loved it so I figured that was the safest bet.  Maybe next time I'll try Brazil nuts.

I mixed all the ingredients in the Vita-Mix, including mint from my own garden.

Here we are pouring the ice cream mix into the ice cream maker:

It says it makes ice cream in less than 20 minutes and it really does!! I think I blinked and it turned into a super thick ice cream mixture.  We added some cacao nibs at the end to make "mint chip" ice cream.

Here is the ice cream in the maker as it was finishing up:

The ice cream was a huge hit!!  I had my bowl topped off with one of the gourmet truffles:

If you've been pondering the idea of making raw ice cream but thought maybe it was too difficult or time consuming, let me put those fears to rest.  It was super simple!!!  It was as simple as making a smoothie.  The ice cream maker literally does all the work, and it doesn't take that long.

I'm looking for ideas for my next ice cream adventure. 

Any ideas or favorite recipes?