Ice Cream in a Baggie

What to do on a hot hot day when you are trying to entertain two almost First graders? Make ice cream of course! I saw the directions for ice cream in a bag over at Two Little Hooligans and knew it would be the perfect activity for Blockette and her best friend "M".

This was a lot of fun, but very VERY messy.

A little tip from me to you.  Make sure that your gallon size zip bag is a FREEZER bag, and not a regular run of the mill zip storage bag.  The rough crystals of the Sea salt WILL tear tiny holes in your bag and you will get lots and lots of salty water EVERYWHERE.

Messiness aside, the ice cream was a lot of fun to make.  The kids were amazed when the "milk" turned from a liquid to a squishy solid.  Super magical.

Don't expect the resulting ice cream to be the same consistency of the stuff you can buy in cartons.  The ice cream to be more like soft serve.  And, if your kids like to make "ice cream soup, " be warned that excessive stirring of the ice cream will turn it into a liquid, very quickly.  Blockette and her friend made "soup" and it turned to liquid so quickly that I just gave them straws to finish up their bowls.  

Homemade ice cream in a baggie from two little hooligans
2 T sugar
1 cup half & half (or light cream)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup coarse salt
ice
gallon-sized Ziploc bag
pint-sized Ziploc bag

Mix the sugar, half & half and vanilla extract together. Pour into a pint-sized Ziploc baggie. Make sure it seals tightly. Now take the gallon-sized Ziploc bag and fill it up halfway with ice and pour the salt over the ice. Now place the cream filled bag into the ice filled bag and seal. Make sure it is sealed tightly and start shaking. Shake for about 5 minutes (or 8 minutes if you use heavy cream.) Open the gallon-sized bag and check to see if the ice cream is hard, if not keep shaking. Once the ice cream is finished, quickly run the closed pint-sized baggie under cold water to quickly clean the salt off the baggie.