The Official Dessert for the Summer

I thought I would post a little bit about Nana's ice cream. She was so good at whipping up a batch or two, and Papa would do the honors of freezing it. She would make Vanilla (with just a touch of lemon flavoring in it) and bake a big chocolate cake often in the summertime. Works in perfectly with my idea of what the summer food groups ought to be. Who needs dinner when you can have cake and ice cream? I can remember many phone conversations that either started or ended with, “I have ice cream in the freezer for anyone who wants to come eat some with me!” After a while she got a recipe for the toffee ice cream and refined and honed it to perfection. I know Bob and Syd and Tracy and Kevin know how to do her recipe to it's finest. I posted a picture of the recipe above and I think if you click on it, it will appear much bigger. I guess you can print it out from that, or you could leave a comment with your email address and I will send you a pdf file that I know will print out great. I am looking at the ice cream freezers now available at Sam's Club for around $60.00 in the half gallon size. They have both the hand crank feature and the electric motor attachment which would be nice. I may have to go back and get one to try out.

I just can't think of summer without the sound of the ice cream freezer going (especially on the holidays) and enjoying some ice cream with Nan and Pop. Those are precious memories and I treasure them. I'm glad I had a Mom that “went to all that trouble” for her family. I don't really know how anything could be that much trouble when you are doing such wonderful things for your family. After all, if you don't do special things for your family, who would you do them for? Thanks Nana and Papa for the many, many things you did for all of us. We have such a lot to remember.

I am posting the recipes on Nana's Cooks In Nana's Nook blog. I hope you will make some ice cream from her wonderful recipes and throw caution to the wind for some ice cream and cake for dinner sometime this summer. I, meantime, am going to explore more flavors and techniques to learn some new stuff. Freezer Time! I also will be going online to find a recipe for the Brandied Fruit that Nana used to keep going. It is a culture that must be tended and added to, much like the popular Friendship Bread that makes it's rounds from time to time. We would put it on vanilla ice cream and it was heaven. If I find it, I will post it.