posted by admin on Jul 1
We all scream for ice cream! And it just so happens that July is National Ice Cream Month! Wooooo!!! Who doesn’t love ice cream? Ice cream is one of the most popular desserts in the world and just about every culture has a version, from the classic American soft serve to the Italian gelato to the Japanese red bean ice cream. There are so many ways to enjoy ice cream, too. Consider the flying saucer 
and ice cream cake.
Anyone who grew up in New York in the past 75 years remembers Carvel ice cream. I remember Carvel being particularly popular in the 1970s and 80s. (Sadly, by the 90s, many Carvel stores began shutting down. Nevertheless, they still have 500 locations.)
Tom Carvel, the founder, invented the first soft-serve ice cream machine in 1939, was the first in the industry to develop a complete line of all-Kosher products, was the first in the industry to use the gift certificate concept, and brought us the likes of Cookie Puss and Fudgie the Whale, and, of course, the 
flying saucer. Throughout my entire life, whenever someone wanted an ice cream cake for their birthday, it was always a Carvel cake, which is famous for its crunchy chocolate crumbs, slowly melding with the melting layers of vanilla on top and chocolate on the botton. Personally, I would eat some of the chocolate, push away the vanilla, and devour the chocolate crunchies.
Tom Carvel used to do his own commercials. He had this gravelly, slightly slurry way of speaking and when you heard it, even if you weren’t in view of the TV, you knew it was a Carvel commercial. (Although, he hurt a few feelings when he introduced Thinny Thin low-fat ice cream and proudly announced on his commercials, “Thinny Thin ice cream for your fatty fat friends.” For more Carvel history, go HERE.
Making homemade ice cream is quite easy. There are different methods–some require ice cream makers and some do not. Here is a recipe (which does require a machine) for Caramel Macchiato Ice Cream. How incredible does that sound? Whip up a batch for that next BBQ and enjoy the summer!
Caramel Macchiato Ice Cream
(Courtesy of Allrecipes.com, contributor: Dana)
Ingredients
- 1 cup milk
- 2 tablespoons instant coffee granules
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 pinch salt
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 3/4 cup caramel dessert sauce
Directions
- Whisk together milk, instant coffee granules, sugar, and salt in a large bowl until sugar is dissolved. Stir in the heavy cream, then cover and refrigerate until chilled, at least 2 hours.
- Pour the chilled mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions until it reaches “soft-serve” consistency. Transfer half of the ice cream to a one- or two-quart lidded plastic container. Pour half of the caramel sauce over the top, then repeat the layers with the remaining ice cream and caramel. Swirl the caramel into the ice cream using a chopstick or knife. Cover surface with plastic wrap and seal. For best results, ice cream should ripen in the freezer for at least 2 hours or overnight.
July 19th, 2011 at 4:43 pm
[...] July 19 is National Ice Cream Day. This is aside from National Ice Cream Month, which I wrote about HERE. (Remember Tom Carvel and those commercials?) Did you know that both National Ice Cream Month and [...]