Dubba's Bumpy Road Ice Cream

Ok, actually I was taking a shot at making one of my favorite flavors, Rocky Road. Unfortunately, I hit a few 'bumps' along the way, and so I call my creation Bumpy Road instead. Actually, it's good, though I still haven't nailed the right consistency ...probably because I haven't cooked my ice cream yet, I'm still doing the cheater method.

Dubba's Bumpy Road Ice Cream Recipe

2 cups of half and half

2 tablespoons of cocoa

1/2 cup of sugar

1/3 cup of honey roasted peanuts

2/3(?) cup of melted marshmallow

**1/2 cup of 2% milk

**several squirts of Nesquik

I started off with the half & half, cocoa, and sugar. It wasn't tasting as sweet as I had hoped, so i added a few squirts of Nesquik and poured into into the Ice-20. After several minutes I realized the taste was not where I wanted, so several more squirts of Nesquik balanced with a half cup of 2% milk. I have the nagging feeling I've been adding too much sugar, so that's why I didn't head straight for the sugar (of course, Nesquik is just cocoa and sugar, so, not sure why I bothered going that way). While it was spinning, i split the peanuts into halves (when necessary) and prepped the marshmallow. Basically, you mix marshmallow with water and gently heat it in the microwave. I added too much water. I tried compensating with more marshmallow, but quickly ran out. At a while, I added in the peanuts and stopped the ice cream maker. At this point, I attempted to add the marshmallow but it just went everywhere. So I just mixed the whole thing together by hand to spread out the flavor.

Overall, I'm still pleased with the result. It grabs you as a nice chocolate with a smooth marshmallow aftertaste. As always, it gets my daughter's approval, and she's now working on her second serving (no worries, a serving is about 2/3 of a Dixie cup). I do love playing with marshmallow, and I will try it again 'til I get it right.

On Second Scoop: Yeah, I made a giant bowl of frosty again, didn't I? Oh well, live and learn. This batch didn't freeze well at all, but it gave me a thought: Maybe I should be using marshmallow in place of the sugar, not on top of it. So look forward to a marshmallow flavored ice cream with a peanut butter swirl, could be good!

Nutrition: 240/125/0.5/5

Now I Remember....

Now I remember why I like my in-laws so much: We went over to babysit our very cute little nephew and my wife's sister said we were welcome to snack on whatever we saw. Well, what do they have in the freezer? Not one, but **TWO** big boxes of Snickers Ice Cream Bars. Oh man, talk about flashbacks to high school and raiding my best friend's freezer for one of the ultimate freezer treats. That Snickers bar tasted as fantastic as the first time I ever had one. Oh, I love these things.

Love of ice cream must be genetic or something, it runs through the whole family on my side and my wife's.

Incase you are wondering: Yes, we would still like them even if their freezer wasn't full of ice cream :)

Get those camels some ice cream, stat!

Those camels look hot, especially the one on the top left, better get them some Ice Cream! We finally made it to the Southwick's Zoo, which is kinda sad considering it's only a half hour away.

Honestly, we weren't impressed. I mean, they had some animals, but considering it was only 80 degrees at most, I expected the animals to do a little more than sleep. Whatever, it's a zoo, let's go try that new Sky ride. Oh wait, it's $5 a person ...but we ride it anyway. Camel, pony, or elephant ride? yeah, another $5 a person. Nevermind. How about a kiddie ride? wait, $2.50 a ride ...hmmm, I'm noticing a pattern.

Anyway, let's see if we can't add a high point to the afternoon with some ice cream before we go check out the muttville comix. Nice, they serve about 8 Hershey's ice cream flavors along with some other stuff. My daughter goes chocolate, my wife goes cookie dough, and I set my sites on Peanut Butter cup. Oh the anticipation! Oh the excitement! ...Oh My....the freezer burn! Man that's a lot of ice crystals. Apparently no one else has ordered ice cream today.

Thankfully, it wasn't all that bad. My cone had the most freezer burn but I ate it anyway, it would be a shame to waste ice cream on such a nice day. In retrospect, I could have asked for another, but there was a nasty line behind us and so I decided to make due for the sake of the sanity of all the other parents. The ice cream was decent, nothing too fancy or exciting, old ice cream can only do so much. It was basically peanut butter chunks in chocolate ice cream. Funny, since peanut butter cup usually implies peanut butter cups, guess I should have ordered moose tracks instead. I'm sure I'll run into Hershey's ice cream again, I'll just make sure it's fresh next time.

Treat of the Week Part 4: Minis Mix Snickers

Snickers my old friend, you are as tasty as ever, even in your miniature form. The fact you didn't injure me makes you all that much sweeter. Yes, Snickers is the king of the ice cream bars, now, and forever!

"Great Value" Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

So, how can mighty Walmart sell a tasty, quality all natural 1.75 quart container of chocolate chip cookie dough? Ummm, they can't. They tried, and the effort is appreciated, but it just doesn't cut it. We are talking about a very bland vanilla, low quality chocolate chips, and the cookie dough is near nonexistent. Besides pulling off all natural, there's just nothing here even remotely interesting. The nicest thing I can say is that I'd rather eat this than something from Blue Bunny.

I highly recommend sliding 2 Freezers down and picking from a decent selection of Breyer's 1.5 quart containers at the exact same price.

Nutrition: 160/70/0/3

Injured in the Line of Duty Treat of the Week - Minis Mix Part 3

Never ...ever in my life ...have I been injured eating a frozen dessert. Short of biting one's cheek, it's unheard of. Well, we were running out the door because of a last minute change of plans, and I decided to treat myself to a quick Twix mini ice cream bar. It's a choice that I've come to regret. I took a small bite and found the Twix to be quite tasty. It had a more noticeable flavor then the previous minis I tried. Encouraged, I went for a second bite. I discovered what I believe to be frozen caramel chunks. Seems straight forward enough right? Well, it slipped towards my big back teeth, but when I went to bite, it slipped, and my top tooth wound up slamming that rough frozen chard into the gums where my wisdom teeth use to be oh so long ago. I immediately let out an "Owwwww!". I was in disbelief. It's an ice cream treat, it's not suppose to hurt!!!

Now let's be honest, you think I'm exaggerating don't you? It's ok, I'm a very skeptical person. It's was still sore, and I felt a rough patch, so I grabbed a flash light and headed for a mirror. Sure enough, my gum was bleeding!! I'm mean physically cut and bleeding. Who in the Sam Hill decided to put mini daggers in my ice cream bar!!

It's been five hours now and I'm still sore. Even the soft chewy meatloaf we had for dinner was too harsh when hitting the sore spot. Now, hopefully this was some bizarre fluke and everyone else is ok, but if it happens to you, don't say I didn't warn ya!!

Blackberry Ice Cream

Wasn't shooting for anything fancy this week, just wanted to see if I could improve on my last foray into fruit based flavors. I had made a mental note to cut back on the sugar ...and then I forgot. Oh well, that's what too much TV as a kid will do to you.

Dubba's Blackberry Ice Cream

2 cups of (organic) half & half

1/2 container of seedless all natural blackberry spread

1/2 cup regular sugar

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

1/2 cup of 2% (organic) milk **added later

Pretty straight forward. Add the spread and sugar to the half & half. Blend it together (the spread didn't want to break up). Put it in the Ice-20 and let it rip. Tasting it as it went lead me to believe it was a bit to strong, so i added a bit of 2% milk (probably could have added a whole cup really). As with the red raspberry, it never quite solidified, so i guess it wasn't the high fructose corn syrup. Maybe it's just too much sugar in general.

Now, the funny thing is, if I gave this to someone, I bet you a dollar they would swear it's black raspberry. Came out good and everyone enjoyed it. It was nice not chewing on seeds this time. Still learning, but we definitely have progress.

side note: I went to the other Shaw's on Sunday and discovered they have a GIGANTIC selection of fruits and spreads. I know where I'm going next time I want a fruity flavor.

Nutrition: 152/72/0/3

Meola's Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Twirl

I'm a nice guy, and I believe in second chances. Sure, you don't get 37 chances, but still a couple is fine by me. I'm in one of our other buildings today and I haven't gone for ice cream all week, so time to give Meola's another try.

I headed out a bit before noon, thinking of what I wanted. I got there and started to peruse the "menu". They have a regular menu, but they also have pictures/drawings of about 15 flavors lined up above the service windows. There's a German Chocolate Cake that sounds good, until you see it's made with chocolate coconut ice cream (sorry, don't do coconut). Down near the end I spy Graham Ma Meola's Ice Cream. It's graham flavored ice cream with chocolate covered graham bits. Now that sounds very different, and potentially very tasty. I happily ask for a small in a sugar cone.

"Sorry, we're all out"

Ooooooohhh. Bad Form Meola's. I say it sounds really good, and the scooper agrees that it's her favorite flavor. Back to the menu ...ok, I'll try chocolate chip peanut butter twirl. The description is a vanilla ice cream with dark chocolate chips and a peanut butter twirl. Sounds like it might taste like a sundae, let's find out.

I take my first few bites and realize that maybe I was too hard on Meola's last time. I try to find a spot down to enjoy my discovery but the benches are covered with spills. The ants are doing their best to clean it up, so I guess I'll sit in the car today. Hmmmmm, It's not bad, got a couple of small peanut butter chunks and chocolate chunks on top. I continue further, the peanut butter chunks have disappeared and the dark chocolate seems to be multiplying. No, not liking these dark chocolate chunks. If you stop eating, they have that unpleasant dark chocolate aftertaste you find in some dark chocolates. Eventually, i hit another peanut butter chunk and it's gigantic. It will also be the last one I hit. So much for a "twirl". The vanilla is also bland. To be honest, I don't even want to finish this boring ice cream, but I paid $3.35, so I'm gonna finish it.

So, Meola's is 0 for 2, and besides maybe going back for Graham Ma Meola's flavor, I think I'm done for the summer with them. It's a shame really, at least the texture isn't so far off like last time.

Treat of the Week - Part 2 Milky Way Mini Ice Cream Bars

Boy these bite size treats are hard to review. I mean, they're good and all, but the flavor is but a fleeting moment in an otherwise ice cream free day. I even went back for seconds today, but I still didn't get a strong sense of what the Milky Way was all about. I can still remember finishing off a snickers ice cream bar after a day of high school. Oh so good, so tasty, so enjoyable (yes, I went back for a second now and then). But these, they just leave me thinking...

"did I just eat ice cream?"

"I don't remember eating ice cream."

"I must have, there's a wrapper in front of me..."

Treat of the Week: Minis Mix Part I: 3 Musketeers

I made a quick pitstop at Super Walmart to do a little restocking of the freezer. What should my wandering eyes spy but this tiny blue box with all the other ice cream treats! I was just thinking about how I wanted to buy a box of Snickers Ice Cream bars earlier today, but this must be better since you get 4 flavors! Oh, I knew this box was opening the second I got in the car.

Oh, so tempting, which one to choose? So much potential! How could it go wrong??? I've had snickers and milky way before, think I'll go with 3 Musketeers.

Well, good news and bad news. The good news is, the 3 musketeers was somewhat tasty, though I think a piece of gum I had a half hour earlier was dulling the flavor a bit. The bad news is: these little bad boys clock in at under 2 inches!! And I don't mean that figuratively, I mean I broke out the ruler and they are all 1 and 15/16" of an inch long. One angry bite and it's all gone. I tried to space it into 4 bites but it was definitely a struggle. I easily could have polished off a "serving" which is one of each bar, but I knew I would be eating dinner in about 15 minutes. The value is decent though, just over $3 for the box.

Nutrition is rounded off, rather than individual, so estimate is 80/45/0/1

Walkabout

Have you ever wondered what an Ice Cream lover like me does on the days I don't go running for ice cream at lunch? Well, I go for a walk actually. Granted, it can't be too hot or too humid (the ice cream in my veins is no match for that summer sun), but today I managed to sneak one in (and I will tomorrow since it's suppose to be cool). Going for a walk is great. It helps me think about my reviews, and it helps burns off a few of the calories that I "earned" while eating for those reviews.

Today I was thinking about making my own ice cream. To be honest, mixing, creating, and sampling the ice cream is probably more fun than actually eating the ice cream. When I'm done, I want to go back and try again ...but then what would I do with all the extra ice cream? A request has been made, so I'm going to try and go a bit more natural with the next recipe. The base will be some organic half & half and were gonna go berry again, but this time no seeds, and no high fructose corn syrup!

Oh yeah, the answer is no, I'm not really following any recipes when I make ice cream. I know there are several wonderful books out there, but I have enough thoughts stuck in my head without reading one of them. I do sometimes surf the net briefly to help guide me a bit (like going with the dark brown sugar in the peanut butter ice cream), but overall, I'm totally wingin' it.

Dubba's Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip

After last week's low cal adventure, it's time to take things up a notch. For the last few days I've had one thought on my mind: Fluffernutter! While my brother stayed a traditional PB&J man, I diverged and went with the Fluff. The question is: can I make a Fluffernutter ice cream?

Peanut butter ice cream should be straight forward enough. I also read the fluff website and it tell you how to make a nice liquid fluff (as opposed to my earlier experiment). But! does this count as a Fluffernutter? What bread-y like ingredient should I use to finish it off?

So, I surfed around and found this blog post. That's right, local company Brigham's already gave it a whirl, but they cheated! They replaced bread with peanut butter cups. Unfortunately, I don't believe they make this flavor anymore. This discovery made me decide to simplify my plan:

Dubba's Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

2 Cups of non-fat half and half

1/2 Cup of creamy peanut butter

1/2 dark brown sugar

hint (teaspoon) of cocoa

1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips

First up, we mixed the peanut butter with the sugar. We then put in the half & half and mixed it with a blender for a bit. At this point, the mix was fairly warm so we threw it in the fridge. After a bit, into the mixer it went. The flavor was strong as it spun, so I probably should have diluted a bit, but too late now. The chocolate chips were added at the end and spread out well.

Mmmmmm, oh, this is good, I could eat this all day ...if I wanted a heart attack that is. Definitely could have gone with just a quarter cup of chips as well. But seriously, it came out really well, but the peanut butter taste is very strong, tastes very close to regular peanut butter. The peanut butter flavor actually reminds me of Turkey Hill's Chocolate Peanut Butter. I decided to figure how bad the damage was.

Nutrition: 291/111/1/5

Yeah, that's right, apparently I made a flavor as unhealthy as Ben & Jerry. At least the fat is coming from peanuts, which means you get a boatload of protein to go with it. I'm really tempted to take another crack at making this and just scale it down a bit, but let's see where my imagination takes us first.

Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby Ice Cream Review

[2016 Update] During the off season, I finally grabbed myself a fresh pint of Chubby Hubby to see if I still loved it as much as I remembered. Well, yeah, it's still a lot of fun. Sure, it'll never be as great as those days of the original peanut butter filled pretzels, but it's still good. I'd be kind of shocked if this flavor ever went away. Original review after the break.

Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby Ice Cream

vanilla malt ice cream with peanutty fudge-covered pretzels

with fudge & peanut buttery swirls

Listen to your stomach!

on the way over from one work site to the next, I got the cravings for some tasty Uhlman's ice cream. I was almost there when I decided to pull into site B instead of staying on the road and heading to Uhlman's. What a mistake that was.

Your stomach knows whats best, so listen to it! Instead of chilling out for fifteen minutes with some fresh ice cream, I wind up walking into a bee's nest of problems with an empty belly to boot. So what happens? Now I'm in a bad mood and still hungry 2 hours later. The afternoon is ruined.

Trust your instincts, they know what's best :)

Ben & Jerry's Magic Brownie

Update: Click here for an updated review (with more pictures) which happened a few years later plus I dug a little into the original version of this flavor.

The full name is Ben & Jerry's Dave Matthews Band® Magic Brownies™ Encore Edition and I just had some. The description is Black Raspberry Ice Cream Swirled with Sweet Cream Ice Cream & Fudgy Brownies. I'll admit, my stomach is a bit off, so first scoop is gonna be quick: I only had about the top 1/2" of the container.

In this small sampling, I discovered a nice black raspberry swirled with a nice sweet cream. I only got two brownie chunks with one more in site, but both were tasty and a respectable size. It's a fine ice cream, and simpler then black raspberry chip, but I think I'll stick with plain black raspberry.

On Second Scoop: This is a nice cream. The brownies are kinda hard, but they still possess a fresh quality, even if it is hard to cut one in two pieces as you dig in. I'm also enjoying the ice cream itself. So, it's not knocking my socks off, but I am enjoying it.

This particular flavor encourages you to go www.lickglobalwarming.org. Unfortunately, it contains one of the worst flash games I have ever played....

Nutrition: 240 / 110-8 / 0 / 4

I really am dangerous....

I don't mean like "oooo, he's dark and mysterious", i mean "don't trust that boy with sharp objects". More then once a coworker has gone "what? they trust you with tools?"

Hehehehehe, ok, it's not that bad, and my coworkers are just joking when they say those things (at least I think they are). Why do I bring this up? It's been a long, long time since I tried scooping ice cream into a sugar cone. It wasn't pretty, but the third time really is the charm.

The first attempt left a broken, mangled cone in my hand. Ok, that one's for me. Second try and I still can't get the Breyer's chocolate out of the scoop without making a mess. Chunks are falling apart and going everywhere. Sure, I could use my hands ...ok, i did use my hands, but that ain't right, into the trash for number two. Time to switch ice creams: My daughter's second choice is cinnamon ice cream (the Breyer's fried ice cream to be specific). It's much easier to scoop and we have a success! It's not fantastic, but it's not broken and my daughter is more then happy to dig in. Mission accomplished.

Dubba's Red Raspberry Ice Cream

You know, there is nothing wrong with simplicity, and by george, non-fat half & half has greatly simplified my early adventures into ice cream making. Why measure half milk and half cream, I can go right for the half & half, and then they go and make it non-fat to boot! Let's see what this week brings us!

Dubba's Red Raspberry Ice Cream

2+ Cups of non-fat half & half

1/2 cup of red raspberry preserves

1/2 cup of regular sugar

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

So, very straight forward: mixed all the ingredients together, let them chill in the fridge for a bit with the hopes the raspberry flavor would spread out evenly, and then into the Ice-20. The only adjustment I made along the way was to add a bit more half & half (regular kind). I did this in the hopes of mellowing out the cheap raspberry preserves I bought (super Walmart just doesn't have a good selection of jams and jellies). The cheap preserves also had about 3 gazillion seeds in it, but the ice cream is so soft, it's not like you have to bite down and be crunching seeds the whole time.

The other 4 times I've used the ice cream making, you can tell it's down when the motor starts working a bit harder. Well, it just kept chugging this time, the mix never really hit the hard freezing point. At this point, it doesn't matter though, it tastes like a wonderful raspberry milkshake (we do small samples when it first comes out and my daughter was so excited she asked for thirds). So, overall, good experiment, though I would recommend a higher quality raspberry filling.

On Second Scoop: Yeah, I just went back for a second helping (I just had some 3 hours ago). It still hasn't frozen quite right, almost has some kind funky foamy jello-y type consistancy, still pretty tastey though ...ok, technically I'm having trouble stopping myself. Hmmm, I'd say the consistency was from the half & half, but this didn't happen last week. The only thing different is the regular sugar instead of confectionery sugar. I really hope its not the half & half, I'd love to be able to churn out high quality non-fat ice cream. Oh well, we'll just have to see how it tastes tomorrow.

-Update: It has solidified further, though it is/did take its sweet time. The cheap preserves are 25% high fructose corn syrup, maybe that had something to do with it. Live and learn I guess, and hopefully I'll figure out what's up.

The State of the Freezer Address

Wow, has it been 3 months already? 64 posts about loving ice cream (well, this one makes 65), not to shabby if I do say so myself. This all started because even know so many people love ice cream, very few seem to write about it. These last 3 months have been an interesting experience, and the state of the freezer? It ain't pretty, but we'll get to that in a moment. Blogging isn't necessarily hard, but it does take some real dedication. And then there is blogging to review things, which adds in both more time and money, but hey, I was going to buy ice cream anyway, now I just spend a bit more time in the freezer section trying to broaden my horizons, that's all.

So, the state of the freezer? It's full, very full. There are currently *6* containers of brand name ice cream in our freezer. On top of that, I still have a bit of homemade ice cream from the weekend, and for some strange reason, I still have the first flavor I made well over a month ago (yeah, I probably not eatin' it at this point). There's also the big box of disappointing skinny cow ice cream sandwiches. To top it off, for some reason, I have managed to collect 6 different kinds of popsicles, all with just one left of each brand, not sure how I pulled that off. Of course, this is on top of all the veggies and frozen breakfast foods that are normally in our freezer.

So, now that I've hit the 3 month mark, where do I want to go from here? First, I need a real domain name for this blog. Second, I hope traffic picks up, I'd love to get peoples comments on various flavors (meaningful comments, not "I hate that flavor"). Third, I need to work on how I acquire and keep flavors because freezer burn is not my friend. Fourth, gotta keep the drive alive! I post an average of 5 times a week. If I do a treat of the week, and one trip to a local place (usually Uhlman's), that still leaves 3 flavors a week to review. Sometimes one of those flavors will be homemade, but that all depends on how busy our weekends are. There are only 3 of us to polish off all this ice cream, so maybe I need to have a few more kids to help cycle through the ice cream faster, or maybe have an ice cream party to clear out the freezer.

Lastly, I hope I don't run out of flavors. I mean, a daily scoop was a great idea, but the creator has long burned out on writing a blog since starting grad school at the end of 2006. Maybe I just need to slow down, but I've been having too much fun. Not only does ice cream taste great, but I really thing it's a great way to relax and "chill out" ...sorry, had to say it. Nowadays, we could all stand to relax a bit. Hopefully the additions of treat of the week, topping of the week, etc will keep things exciting and diverse enough for all to enjoy. Audience participation is a beautiful thing, so feel free to send me any suggestions you might have.

Moose Tracks Ice Cream from Uhlman's

You shouldn't be surprised by now, but yet again Uhlman's presents a wonderful version of the flavor known as "Moose Tracks". As far as I know, the Moose Tracks name is a registered trademark, so we'll have to assume Uhlman's is using Moose Tracks Fudge and their peanut butter cups.

First off, let me say this presentation puts the recently tested Turkey Hill Chocolate Nutty Moose Tracks to shame. We're talking night and day difference. Not that the Turkey Hill stuff was bad, but in retrospect, it could have been so much better.

Ok, let's dig in. So, we have our standard vanilla base, a wonderful moose tracks fudge swirl, and the perfect scattering of tiny peanut butter cups. The fudge is hard to describe, it seems like a mix of chocolate syrup and cocoa mix. Usually, you bite a swirl and it's a nice clean break. The great thing about this swirl was, as you eat it, the swirl blends in with the rest of the ice cream. Give it a lick, and your vanilla ice cream is now well blended with the fudge. I've never seen a fudge swirl do that before, I was totally amazed. Granted, fresh ice cream has the benefit of being the perfect temperature for this to happen, but still, it was great to see (and taste) in action. The swirl was also perfectly blended throughout the ice cream. Only at the very end did I discover a small puddle of fudge at the bottom of my cone, and that is when I finally discovered how strong the taste of the fudge really was by itself.

As if that wasn't good enough, the peanut butter cups they use are near perfect, or in other words, I've never had better. Just smaller than a dime, these little bad boys explode with peanut buttery goodness when you bite them. The layer of chocolate is just thick enough to hold about half of the cups together, the other half are broken up and scattered through the ice cream. As you bite, the vanilla ice cream, fudge swirl, and mini peanut butter cups blend perfectly together in your mouth.

Why can't all ice cream be made with this level of perfection? I don't know. Awesome job Uhlman's, yet another satisfying flavor to review.

Size Matters! a.k.a Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

I was in the small but respectable frozen treat section of BJ's wholesale club when I noticed something new, oversized Ben & Jerry's!! The lid even says "Size Does Matter!" Ok, technically, you only wind up paying $5 instead of $6, but hey, a buck is a buck. My choices were Cherry Garcia, Chocolate Fudge Brownie (next time!), and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Cookie Dough it is.

Let's put it this way ...I have been underwhelmed. There's just nothing special here. It's average cookie dough chunks in an average vanilla. I even tried it two different nights thinking that maybe I was just eating to fast the first time. It's a fine flavor, but I'm afraid to say that it's just not worth the extra expense, especially when there are so many wonderful Ben & Jerry's flavors.

Nutrition: 250/110/2/4

Dubba's Cherryberry Ice Cream

I don't believe it, I think I just came up with a flavor people would want! Plus it was an accident. I was attempting to make my Cherry Pie Ice Cream that I was dreaming of, but the flavor just wasn't getting all the way there (probably because I ran out of sugar). So, I decided to add a smidge of strawberry to take off the edge. Well, I added too much, but it worked out for the best. My cherry pie became cherry strawberry ...cherryberry! OK, maybe I should call it Cherryberry Pie, iunno. Let's recap from the beginning.

Dubba's Cherryberry Ice Cream

2 Cups of non-fat half & half

3/4 Cup of sugar

40% of a can of cherry pie filling

1/3 teaspoon of vanilla

1 Ready-to-bake Shortbread crust (broken up, but not to small)

(some) strawberry syrup

So, in a bowl goes the half and half and sugar. Decided to take the edge off by adding a bit of vanilla, but the container was almost empty (so about a 1/3 teaspoon). I then started spooning the cherry pie filling and small cherries into the bowl (avoiding the giant cherries). We then stirred the mixture for a bit. At the end I decide to squish the cherries and mix the whole thing a bit more. Into the Ice-20 the mixture went. After awhile I realized the cherry pie flavor wasn't going to make it, so i added a "small amount" (in other words, I have no idea how much I added) of strawberry syrup. Mixing continued for a bit more. I waited until the last possible minute to added the broken up crust in the hopes of keeping it as crisp as possible.

I took out the mix and it was quite tasty. My daughter wanted the extra shortcake crumbs in her ice cream cup, but I ate the new flavor as is. It really hit the spot, the crust is still crunchy, and I was amazed at how well the non-fat half & half held up. Maybe there is hope for my ice cream making abilities after all!

On Second Scoop: Wow, this held up well in the freezer, the shortbread pieces are still crunchy! 2 interesting points: First, the cherry flavor has spread. Second, the strawberry (syrup) flavor has mellowed. Maybe it's the real cherries versus the fake strawberry flavor, I guess it's one of those things that you learn as you go.

Topping of the Week: Sprinkles!!

oh yes, nothing like sprinkles to bring an extra big smile to a kid's face. Doesn't hurt with us adults either. I finally decided to crack open the container we had in the cabinet. I was happy to see those little buggers everywhere, but they made me wish I also had some whip cream handy. The bad news is this particular brand of sprinkles (Marble Mix-ins) are rock solid, they are easily the hardest sprinkles I have ever eaten, totally took the fun out of the moment.

So, while I recommend sprinkles for the extra smiles, avoid marble mix-ins

Treat of the Week: Skinny Cow Low Fat Ice Cream Sandwiches Part II: Chocolate

Wow, my disappoint is complete. The chocolate ones are better than the vanilla ones, but I won't be buying them again. The only thing they have going for them is the fact they are so low cal. You can have one of these bad boys (literally) right before bed and feel no guilt. To add injury to insult (yes, I know that's backwards), the cookie part keeps welding itself to my fingers.

Nutrition: 140/15/3/4