On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 4:45:04 PM UTC-4, wrote:
> I got a 1-quart Donvier (non-electric) for $5 at a yard sale (last year?), made chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream with it recently, and it worked beautifully.
>
> But I have to wonder - why DOES anyone with a freezer need to use an ice cream machine to make it? Does it have to do with the texture? If so, what?
>
> Seems to me one could just take a plastic container, put in the cooked mixture, stick it in the freezer and take it out to stir for a few seconds every hour. Yes, that WOULD mean hanging around the house for about four hours or so, but other than that, I don't know what the problem is. (With the Donvier, it took maybe only half an hour of occasional stirring before I transferred the ice cream to a plastic box and put it in the freezer for three hours, according to the Williams-Sonoma recipe. Of course, I was free to leave the house once I did that.)
>
> I'm trying the peppermint stick recipe from The Joy of Cooking right now, but that has a higher percentage of milk, so I'm guessing it won't be that great - but at least it has no eggs and didn't require any cooking. (I DID have to stick the Donvier, with the mixture, back in the freezer after some stirring - the mixture wasn't nearly as thick as with the other recipe. I left it there for three hours, took it out and it was still somewhat liquid in the middle, so I stirred it again every 15 minutes or so, three times, and only then emptied the Donvier into the plastic box to put back in the freezer.)
>
>
> Lenona.

That is the way to make a granita which is a bit like a sorbet but with ice crystals instead of smooth. Make a fruit juice/sugar solution and place it in a shallow dish in the freezer. Once it starts to freeze stir it to break up the ice that is forming. Do this every 20 minutes. The whole process takes several hours.

Check out recipes on the internet. This makes a wonderful frozen desert.

http://www.richardfisher.com