We All Scream

We recently bought a kitchen appliance. This means we are following in the age-old American tradition of buying a specialty appliance, using it once, and putting it away "for later" when it is decided that the item should be auctioned off at a yard sale.

The appliance in question this time was a Cuisinart brand ice cream maker from Bed Bath & Beyond. It features a removable, reusable tub filled with special liquid that you stick in the freezer. That way, you needn't bother with ice and salt.

What I'm trying to say is, we made ice cream.

First we prepared the ingredients. All four of them.

I measured the 1/2 cup of evaporated cane juice (sugar) and one cup whole organic milk. Two cups of organic heavy cream were also measured.

That's three ingredients. Only one left. Easy, right?

While I put the whole milk on the stove,



Trustin got to the business of preparing the fourth ingredient: 8 oz. Belgian chocolate (sans hydrogenated oils). It came in a block, as we'd purchased it from Whole Foods. Trustin cut it into bite-sized pieces for mixing with the sugar in the food processor.



We poured the sugar and chocolate pieces into the food processor bowl to be processed.



Connected the processor, turned it on and...

Nothing. Happened.

Except for a few pathetic whirring noises.

We didn't believe it at first, so we kept trying maybe five more times. Trustin even opened the machine and tried to assess (several times) what was wrong.



More assessment:



Sensing our stress levels rising, Trinket did her best to be helpful. She would stand directly behind one of us and lick the linoleum anytime she felt like something might have accidentally felt like perhaps it had fallen. Even when nothing actually fell, she was always there, our faithful chihuahua.



Because god forbid the kitchen floor should have even one micron of crumb on it.

Dulce decided to get in on the helpful-pet action too, by giving her all to getting the dryer door open. It's her most fervent wish to make it into the dryer someday.



After Trustin and I decided to pull our heads out of our asses regarding the food processor, we realized a blender would, uh, blend the chocolate and sugar together sufficiently.

So Trustin pulled it out grumpily. It really isn't fair for me to be picking on him, because, you see, as I took the picture, I had a scowl on my face, too.



After we dumped the sugar and chocolate in, we fully expected the blender to explode on us.



It didn't. But it did piss us off a little bit because it didn't quite blend the sugar and chocolate together effortlessly. At this point, we decided to ignore the advice of the recipe and just blend the motherfucking milk with the sugar and chocolate, all together at the same time.



It worked. Stupid Cuisinart cookbook.



We poured it into a container to chill it for 30 or more minutes (this is what the instructions specified). In retrospect, we probably should have just left it in situ and placed the whole blender pitcher in the fridge. Not that it matters because our minds were occupied with an episode of Desperate Housewives at the time.



After the chocolate mixture was well chilled, we needed to blend it with the cold heavy cream. So we used the hand blender attachment of the food processor (the part designed for soft things like fruit and liquids, for smoothies and shakes and the like -- the part that can afford to be wussy). Unfortunately, we don't have anymore pictures of our ice cream making endeavor, as we'd lost enthusiasm for documenting it.

Thankfully, we didn't lose enthusiasm for the project itself. After blending the heavy cream with the chilled chocolate mixture, we chilled it again for thirty more minutes while we watched another episode of Desperate Housewives.

When it was done chilling, we poured it into the pre-frozen tub, turned on the ice cream maker, and, you guessed it, watched yet another episode of Desperate Housewives. By the time the show was done, the ice cream was ready.

I don't have a picture of the ice cream, but I do have a picture of some weewee pads I serged for Trinket:



Terrycloth sandwiches with flannel "bread" in a Disney theme... What could be more delicious?

Don't answer that.