White Mountain Ice Cream Maker With Hand Crank

Many people have happy memories of using an old fashioned hand crank ice cream maker when visiting their parents or grandparents. In this day and age when everything is about smaller and quicker and of course easier there is something quite charming about being able to engage the family in making ice cream by everyone taking a turn with turning the handle.

This is a wonderful way to include your children in the fun of making something that they will love to eat and you have the added knowledge that they’re not doing this in the presence of electricity. That being said you can if you wish buy the white mountain electric ice cream maker which is the same machine but electrically driven.

Check out the White Mountain 4 quart hand crank machine here

History of ice cream

Historically ice cream was made by placing the ice cream mixture in a container in a bucket of ice and salt mixture and the mixture froze into a block and was chipped off as required, someone then invented the first hand crank churning machine and ice cream became a different dessert, soft and more whipped in texture and of course that is what we love today.

Salt and Ice

People often possessed a salt and ice type ice cream maker especially if the families had milk and cream available to make it. There are many recipes to make ice cream, egg based cooked mixes or just basic cream and milk based mixes and the flavours could be whatever fruit was available in season. The machines used in the past worked so well the ones we can buy today are based on the same designs.

White Mountain

White Mountain is a well known supplier of ice cream makers since 1853 and you can still find older models for sale on ebay or classified ads as they were well made. Its only our generation that have much more choice of items and tend to change them often for something better.

White Mountain Ice Cream Maker With Hand Crank

A lot of people think that White Mountain make the best hand crank ice cream maker. The design of the current hand crank machines are much the same as the older ones, you have a choice of 4 quart and 6 quart models. They don’t have too many parts to them but the most recognisable is the wooden bucket with the White Mountain logo on it. The buckets look like something your Grandma would have had and are made from New England pine panels which are colored with a dark stain to give it that special aged look. To keep everything together they have use galvanised hoops and all the fittings have been electroplated to make it a long lasting product.

Ice cream maker parts

The ice cream maker comes with a stainless steel container to hold the ice cream, it has a lid to stop the ice and salt from falling in. The container sits inside the wooden bucket and is surrounded by ice. The churning dasher system sits inside the ice cream container, it’s a patented design with wooden blades for scraping the ice cream off the edges of the canister. The dasher is made from heavy duty electroplated steel, there is no way this dasher is going to snap while mixing the ice cream. The central post of the dasher fits through the lid of the canister and then into the hand crank mixer. The metal hand crank mixing unit fits over the post of the dasher and secures on the fixings on the top of the bucket.

Instructions

To make your ice cream you need to mix up an ice cream recipe that you like, it says you can fill the container half way so if you have a 6 quart machine you can make up to 3 quarts of mixture. The more mixture you have the longer it will take to freeze, but it will also last longer. Add you ice cream container into the bucket and add a little ice to secure it. You will need a lot of ice to fill the bucket and some more for when it melts and you will also need some rock salt. Add the dasher to the container and then pour in the ice cream mix. Add the lid of the container and then secure the hand crank unit onto the dasher and the bucket. Fill around the container with layer of ice and rock salt. You are ready to start cranking. Keep going until you have a soft serve ice cream.

White Mountain Electric Ice Cream Maker

If you want the the chance of making ice cream in the old fashioned way but you don’t fancy the cranking bit then you can buy the same unit with an electric motor the White Mountain 6 quart ice cream maker. It’s made in the same way with the bucket, the ice cream container and the dasher unit, the only difference is in the electric motor which attaches to the dasher the same way as the hand crank and secures on the top of the bucket. Plug it into the electric and let it do the churning for you.

Which would you prefer?

If you want the authentic ice cream making experience and prefer to not let your kids around electric then you may want to get the traditional hand crank option, you can also stand this outside or move it to where its the most suitable place without the worry of an electrical outlet, it will also be quieter.

If you think the hand crank will be too much physical work but you still want to make ice cream the same way then go for the electric option.

Conclusion

If you want to start a family tradition of ice cream making with your kids this is a great machine to buy that you can use to get everyone involved. If there are a lot of you then the crank turning can be done in turns and it won’t seem too much effort.You can make a competition of it or make everyone churn for 5 minutes, even the little ones can help and it’s so much nicer to eat something that you have helped to make. Even if you invest in the electric option the kids will love helping you to layer the ice and salt to get it ready to mix. You can buy both the white mountain ice cream maker with hand crank or the White Mountain Electric Ice Cream Maker at Amazon.com