The Galveston County Daily News

When you think about it, it’s a little strange that homemade ice cream is seen as the quintessential summer treat. After all, making it used to involve quite a bit of sweaty effort — cooking the ice cream base, hauling bags of ice and rock salt and then cranking the ice cream maker. After all that, of course ice cream tasted really good — anything cold would have!

Even though I had very pleasant memories of family gatherings that included making ice cream, repeating the experience just never seemed to be in the cards. For one thing, I remembered my father covering the ice cream maker, laden with ice and a layer of rock salt, with a burlap sack, and where does anybody get burlap sacks these days?

Fortunately, there is now a way to make ice cream at home that doesn’t involve a scavenger hunt for burlap bags or other arcane ingredients. Electric ice cream makers combine the satisfaction of producing homemade treats with the ease of a push-button appliance.

There are many ice cream makers available that do all the churning and freezing while sitting quietly on the countertop. Even better, they do it in as little as 20 or 30 minutes, and cost as little as $25 dollars.

“I haven’t bought ice cream at the store in three years,” one cooking-store employee recently told me.

My Cuisinart ice cream maker makes 1-1/2 quarts of ice cream or frozen yogurt in a self-contained freezing chamber. The result straight out of the churning process is the consistency of soft-serve ice cream or custard, and an additional hour in the freezer produces firm, scoopable ice cream.

One of the biggest benefits of making ice cream at home is being able to create an endless variety of flavors. One of the others is the ability to control exactly what goes in, whether the objective is to keep it low-calorie or to avoid sugar or dairy products.

In his cookbook, “The Perfect Scoop,” lifelong ice cream lover David Lebovitz pares frozen yogurt down to the basics. His recipe for frozen vanilla yogurt calls only for yogurt, sugar and a splash of vanilla.

He suggests making it with Greek-style yogurt, but explains how to turn regular yogurt into the thick consistency that is the hallmark of the Greek-style product.

Line a colander with paper towels, place the colander over a large bowl, and drain any yogurt — nonfat, low-fat, whatever — overnight in the refrigerator. The drained yogurt usually loses about half its volume; to make a recipe that calls for three cups of Greek-style, start the draining process with six cups of regular yogurt.

While the frozen yogurt recipe has the fewest ingredients, most ice cream recipes are reasonably simple — and with all the churning taken care of, there’s more time to dedicate to getting the flavors just right.

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Vanilla Frozen Yogurt

3 cups strained yogurt or Greek-style yogurt

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)

Mix together the yogurt, sugar, and vanilla (if using). Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Refrigerate 1 hour.

Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Makes about 1 quart.

— Recipe from “The Perfect Scoop,” by David Lebovitz

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Peach Sorbet

Juice of 1 large orange

Juice of 1 lemon

4 cups fresh sliced peaches (about 16 small peaches or 10 large peaches)

1 1/3 cups sugar

2 tablespoons limoncello (optional)

3 tablespoons Grand Marnier (optional)

Juice one large orange and one lemon and pour juice into blender.

Wash peaches and peel with a small knife. Remove pit and slice peach into smaller chunks before dropping into measuring cup.

Once you have 4 cups of peeled and sliced peaches, dump them into the blender.

Add sugar (start with just 1 cup if your peaches are really sweet), limoncello and Grand Marnier. Purée in blender until well blended, about 1 minute. It’s OK if the purée is a little frothy, but don’t over-blend.

Taste the purée for sweetness. Add more sugar to suite your taste. Keep in mind it will taste less sweet when frozen, so make sure it is a little on the sweet side.

Chill base and then freeze in ice cream maker.

Chill mixture in ice bath until less than 45 degrees.

Pour into ice cream maker and freeze according to your maker’s instructions. Once chilled, remove from ice cream maker and place in dedicated (odor-free) container to let ripen in the freezer for several hours.

Because of the alcohol, it will always be a tiny bit soft.

— Recipe from Brian Stephens, The Chocolate Gourmand

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Premium Chocolate Ice Cream

6 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened)

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 cup milk

3 large egg yolks

Chop chocolate. In a heavy saucepan whisk together sugar and cocoa powder until combined and whisk in cream and milk.

Bring mixture just to a boil, stirring occasionally.

In a bowl beat yolks until smooth. Add hot cream mixture to yolks in a slow stream, whisking, and pour into pan.

Cook custard over moderately low heat, stirring constantly, until a thermometer registers 170 degrees.

Remove pan from heat and add chopped chocolate, whisking until melted.

Pour custard through a sieve into a clean bowl and cool.

Chill custard, its surface covered with plastic wrap, at least 3 hours, or until cold, and up to 1 day.

Freeze custard in an ice-cream maker. Transfer ice cream to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden.

Ice cream may be made one week ahead. Makes 1 quart.

— Recipe from “The Cuisinart Ice Cream Make Cookbook”