More Frozen Wonderfulness

At least once a summer when I was growing up, we dug out the old-fashioned hand-cranked ice cream maker. My mother would assemble the base, and the kids would take turns crushing ice and sprinkling rock salt and cranking cranking cranking. When it was done, some lucky soul got to lick the dasher, and then the whole caboodle got wrapped up in a wool army blanket to wait until dinner was over.

Sometimes we'd make peach ice cream, but more often than not, we made tutti-frutti. It wasn't actually called tutti-frutti in the original recipe - the Times called it "fruit ice cream" - but we always called it tutti-frutti. It's a mutt, a mix of lemon, orange, pineapple and banana. It tastes a little like bubblegum, but in a good way, and if you offer a taste to someone and ask them to identify the ingredients, they often can't - it's one of those things where the mix takes on a life of its own.

This recipe makes a huge amount - if you've got a one or two quart ice cream maker, you probably want to make a third or a half.

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Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream

3 cups milk
3 cups sugar
1 ½ cups heavy cream
1 13 ½ ounce can of evaporated milk
1 t. grated lemon peel
¾ cup lemon juice
2 t. grated orange peel
1 ½ cups orange juice
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 ½ cups undrained canned crushed pineapple
Ice cream maker (and ice and rock salt if it’s an old-fashioned one)

1. Heat the milk and sugar, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the cream and evaporated milk, and chill the mixture for at least a few hours.
2. Mix all the fruit ingredients together, and chill.
3. Pour the milk mixture into a prepared ice-cream maker. The container shouldn't be more than three-quarters full to allow for expansion.
4. Set the machine going (or start cranking) and freeze for about 30 minutes or until the mixture is partly frozen. Add the fruit mixture and continue to freeze until the machine slows or stops.
5. Eat.
   

Makes one gallon. You’ll want to follow your own ice cream maker’s instructions as to the preparation and freezing and ice and rock salt and yada yada yada. Recipe from the New York Times, 1972.