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.