If you only eat Ice Cream in the summer, then it’s nearly too late for me to be posting this recipe, but here at the ranch, we eat ice cream whenever we feel like it, no matter the weather! And . . . it’s apple season right now, and nothing goes better with a good piece of homemade apple pie than a scoop of ice cream, am I right?

I’ve been making this for me and My Cowboy all summer, and it doesn’t require you to have an ice cream machine of any kind. While it’s a bit annoying to have to remember to go stir it all the time, it’s so worth it in the end. And for the last couple years, we’ve been a lot more careful about not eating things we can’t pronounce, so making our own ice cream keeps the chemicals to a minimum! (Plus, I can control the amount of sugar involved!)

Here’s how I do it:

Homemade Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 cups whole milk

2/3 cup sugar
(I usually only use 1/3 cup, but you can experiment according to your own taste)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Mix these four ingredients together, and pour the mixture into a shallow pan (I use an 8″ x 8″ glass baking dish) that can be placed in the freezer.

Let it freeze for 90 minutes, then stir it, and put it back in the freezer.

Be sure to scrape down the sides where it freezes first, and stir it all up good.

Let it freeze for another 45 minutes, then stir it again, and put it back in the freezer.

Let it freeze for another 30 minutes, then stir it again, and keep on freezing it.

From this point on, give it a stir every 30 minutes, until it’s frozen to the consistency you want it.

What you don’t eat immediately can be stored in a carton in the freezer, and you can eat it later. Just let it sit out for a little bit so you can easily scoop it.

While I’m not gonna go into it here, I’m sure you can think of all sorts of add-ins for this. My Cowboy puts caramel sauce on top. I eat it just like it comes out of the freezer, but I’m thinking of trying to add coffee to a batch sometime and see if I can make a good coffee-flavored ice cream!

You can also begin with chocolate milk or strawberry milk, reduce the sugar even more, and have strawberry or chocolate ice cream really easy!

The process itself would probably work with any Homemade Ice Cream recipe that requires a freezer — you just have to do all the timing and stirring, but you could probably have any flavor you want without a machine!