Danielle's Homemade Products.....Homemade Ice Cream

This house just loves ice cream...but ice cream addictions like ours gets pricy after a while....so I had to find a way to make ice cream a treat, less expensive, and one that tastes amazing...well success is here

This recipe is very simple, has 2 basic ingredients and then any flavorings or additions you wish to add, and does NOT require an ice cream maker.

Here is the base recipe:

1 pint of whipping cream
1 can of sweetened condensed milk

Yes that is it...anything else you add is about flavor and additions

Start with the pint of whipping cream, I used a stand mixer but you can also use an electric mixer.

Pour the entire container into your bowl of your mixer.



This is so simple that even the little ones can help...here is my helper today. She did the majority of the work while I supervised, opened the necessary items, and told her what to put in and when.



Then whip it until stiff peaks form.



This is what stiff peaks should look like...the peak is stiff and retains it shape when the mixer head is picked up. I knew I needed to take it just a little further so I continued to mix it for about a minute after wards until it looked like this...



Don't forget to scrape down your work bowl every once in a while to get the bottom since some mixers tend to miss this area.



I always remove the attachment before doing this to prevent me (or my daughter) from getting the mixture all over your hands when you are trying to get around it.

Then I switched to my paddle attachment and we poured in the sweetened condensed milk and mixed just enough to incorporate. If you are using an electric mixer, you may want to use a spatula to fold this into the whipped cream. Do this gently so that you don't lose the fluffiness from whipping the cream.



Once the sweetened condensed milk is incorporated, now it is time to flavor your ice cream base. Here we added chocolate syrup and chocolate chips. We added about 2 tablespoons of the syrup and then I dumped in the half bag of chips we had.



I stirred the chocolate syrup in first, just until incorporated, then stirred the chocolate chips in. Stir only a few times when adding in chips to keep the beaters from tearing apart your chocolate chips. From here, I poured/spooned the mixture into a container that has a lid.



Then cover the container and put it in the freezer. If you like soft serve, check it after about 4 hours, if you like your ice cream firm, then wait at least 6. I put mine in my deep freezer, but I put it in the basket of the deep freezer so it wasn't touching any other frozen item so even after over 12 hours in the freezer, our ice cream was still on the soft side.



Let me just say that describing the ice cream was not easy. It is very rich, creamy, and tastes amazing. My daughter said we should make this all the time, though I admit that it was so rich neither of us could finish the two scoops we each had in our bowls. I did squirt extra syrup in the mixture so that with the dark chocolate chips made it super chocolatey (is that a word?) and the rich, full, flavor told me I could of used just the 2 tablespoons and that would of been fine.

Now the joys of this mixture is easy to explain. It is yours, the flavors are yours, and the flavors are customizable (just like my products, lol, sorry couldn't resist). The flavor combinations or choices are endless. Here are some examples:

any flavored liquid creamer
peanut butter & stir in chopped up pieces of peanut butter cups
Bailey's Irish Cream
any flavored coffee syrup (example caramel, then swirl in caramel ice cream topping)
any syrup flavoring for milk (example, chocolate or strawberry syrup)
extracts
candy pieces

The fun part is the flavor options are endless based on your preference. I would stick with keeping the liquid flavorings to about 2 tablespoons (or it can be too rich and sweet, like ours was by a bit), and then gently stir in what ever solid additions you want in. If you are using extracts, you may want to stick with about a teaspoon of that (this you may have to play with and test out since I didn't add any extracts to mine, but they tend to be strong when added to food items, think cookies since only a small amount is needed to add flavor).

Happy ice cream making...don't forget to let me know how your ice cream turned out along with what your favorite flavors were.

Danielle's Homemade Products...Removing Candle Wax Tip

I have seen numerous ways to remove excess candle wax from a jar after you have finished with the candle (thank you, Pinterest), so I thought I would test two of those ways out. My aunt, the darling that she is, has been saving jars for me, including candle jars. Some of the jars still had some wax at the bottom of them so I needed to get that wax out before I could repurpose those pretty jars.

My first attempt (sadly I forgot to take photos of, sorry) was fairly simple and failed miserably. I put the glass jar with the candle wax into the microwave and heated it up until all the wax was melted. Then I poured water into the jar. I have to say watching the candle wax harden as the water it hit and the pretty design that was made was impressive, though did not reach my goal of removing the wax.

Then I realized my problem. The wax was hot, the water not so much...the cooler water was instantly cooling and hardening the wax but wasn't creating a layer of wax I could easily remove. So I started over.

The second try was more successful. This time I left the jars of wax alone and heated up the water. Once the water was boiling, I poured it over the wax in the jar.



From the pictures you can see that the wax is liquid floating on top of the hot water (sorry for the messy stove, its starting to get stained again so I need to find the last stone sponge I have...apparently I put it up so well that I hid it even from myself). I was pretty stoked. I let the jars sit until the water was room temperature and then checked on them again.

My trial was semi-successful. I say that because some of the candles fully melted and were then floating in a solid layer along the top, while others had only partially melted. I removed all of the solid candle wax that I could, the ones that were successful I set aside for washing out and the ones that still had candle wax on the bottom I put through the tip again.



Again, this was semi-successful with each time adding more hot water until eventually all the jars were mainly wax free and ready to wash out. I had multiple different brands of candles, but even then I can't say that one brand was easier to remove the wax on or cooperated better than another. I had 4 of the same brand and 1 of the jars melted completely the first time through while the other 3 jars I had to do a total of 4 times. All 4 jars had the same amount of wax in the bottom of them.

Here was one of the first successes. I did have to use a knife to cut the wax disk in half before I could remove it and I did find that I had to use a knife to run it around the edge of the disks to dislodge them from the jars.



There were still a few bits in the bottom of this jar, but nothing that I shouldn't be able to wash completely out...when I get to that part.

Overall, this is a nice time, was fairly simple, but may have to be repeated a few times to remove all the wax from the jar. I believe it took 5 or 6 times total for the last stubborn ones, but I did eventually get the wax out of all the jars. Then are sitting in my sink waiting for a good wash down as I type this (sorry, was just plain tuckered out after all the wax melting and remelting and remelting...well you get the picture).

Bottom line is the tip does work, but some patience (think wash, rinse, repeat....wash, rinse, repeat...sorry shower humor for those who have never read the label of their shampoo bottle...............I swear I only did it to see if I could pronounce the ingredients, nope I couldn't) may be needed. Save this for a day when you have extra time, other cleaning to do in between, or no where to go since the water takes at least an hour or two to cool down completely. It would probably even work to pour the boiling water in before bed and taking the solid pieces out in the morning and repeating that for a couple days. The effort was worth the reward because those pretty jars will now be used to showcase some other pretty items....maybe even display some of my body scrubs for easy use in the bathroom.

Happy St. Patrick's Day....

Danielle's Homemade Products....Shampoo Bar Review

So we have been trying out my new shampoo bars for the last couple days. Let me start out by saying I have naturally curly hair with lots of natural frizz. Here is what my hair looked like when I was growing up....



That is me and my brother when I was in 7th grade...scary crazy right? Really scary part is that this crazy hair was shampooed, conditioned, and had about a gallon of styling products in it to tame it down that much (yes, I said tame it down so you can only imagine without any).

Over the years, I have tried many shampoos, conditioners, styling products, and leave in conditioners for both straight hair, curly hair, and even for ethnic hair at times. I have not found anything that works for long without weighing down or making my hair feel greasy at times so I was excited to try out this new shampoo bar and see how it worked.



Here are the finished product after curing. I must say that I think I am in love.

First off, I should explain that switching from commercial shampoo to a homemade shampoo does take an adjustment period for your hair. Commercial shampoos tend to strip all the natural oils from your hair, while natural shampoos do not. This means that for the first month of use, it may seem like the natural or homemade shampoo is not fully working for your hair, but once your hair and scalp adjust, it is a beautiful thing. We have only used the new shampoo bars twice so far, but I am already happy with the change.

I didn't think to take pictures the first day we used it while my hair was still wet to show the difference, but here it is once I let it air dry.



Now, I should also tell you that I did not use any conditioner, any finishing rinse(like vinegar), or put any styling products in my hair after using the shampoo bar. That is straight shampoo bar, then brushing, and air drying.

The first thing I noticed was that my hair felt dry in the shower. I don't mean that my hair dried instantly after washing, but it did not have that same feel that my hair has after using conditioner. It also was a bit knotty and took a little work to brush it out after washing it, but my hair seems to knot easily especially since I have been wearing it long again. I also noticed that when I use commercial shampoo the ends of my hair are already drying and frizzing by the time I go to brush my hair, but with the shampoo bar my ends were still wet and dripping water in spots even after having the towel wrapped around my hair while I got dressed. My daughter's hair while a little knotty, was not nearly as bad to brush as when I use commercial shampoo and conditioner on her hair, and even the next morning (we shower at night) she was able to easily brush through her hair.

The second day we used it, I took pictures of our hair both wet and dry. Here are the pictures of it wet...



Once again, there is no conditioner, no acidic rinse, or any styling products added to either of our hair. Here are the pictures of my hair after air drying again...



I am pretty pleased with the results. Since this was the first time I made the shampoo bars, I will not be adding these to the website just yet. While I am satisfied with the product, I am still working on the scent for these bars so please feel free to comment below with scent suggestions.

For those not sure how to use a shampoo bar instead of commercial shampoo, it is fairly simple. Once your hair is wet, wet the shampoo bar and rub it on your hair. I started at my scalp until I could feel the soap then moved to a different spot until my head was covered in soap, then I pulled my long hair over my shoulder and rubbed the soap bar into the long strands (kind of like when you hand wash something and rub the fabric together but in this case the "fabric" is my hair and the shampoo bar). My daughter's hair is fairly short so I just rubbed the bar against her head until I could see the bubbles in her hair, then put the bar down and rubbed her head to lather the soap just like with commercial shampoo (I did this with my hair too once all my hair was covered in soap).

Overall, I am pretty happy with using the shampoo bar and it will be added to the website once I have gotten the scent worked out. I doubt I will buy shampoo in a bottle again....though maybe a homemade liquid shampoo isn't out of the question in the future, but one thing at a time.

Happy shampooing...