Ice cream in the bag is prepared without an ice cream maker with cream, condensed milk and icing sugar. All you need is ice, salt and a little shaking
Three ingredients, two freezer bags and a handful of ice. With this you prepare scientific ice cream (or ice cream in the bag), one technique born in the United States which uses a simple chemical principle to obtain a creamy dessert without any appliances. It may seem like a bizarre idea, but the mechanism really works and is effective in combating the summer heat.
The secret to creating scientific ice cream
The real secret lies in coarse salt. When it is added to ice, it lowers the melting point of water: the ice therefore melts more slowly, but in doing so it removes heat from the surrounding environment, in this case from the ice cream mixture closed in the internal bag. The temperature drops below zero and the liquid begins to solidify, just like what happens in professional ice cream makers.
For the ice cream baseyou need 250 ml of fresh liquid cream, 100 g of condensed milk and 50 g of icing sugar. For the rest, you will need one small freezer bag, one large freezer bag, cubed ice, five tablespoons of coarse salt and a clothespin.
Preparation, step by step
Pour condensed milk, cream and icing sugar into a bowl and mix until a homogeneous mixture is obtained. Everything is transferred into the small bag, which must be closed with a tight knot and further blocked with the clothespin, to avoid any leakage.
The small bag is then inserted into the large one, filled with ice cubes and coarse salt. This also closes with a firm knot.
At this point, the manual part begins: you have to Shake the bag vigorously for at least 15-20 minutes. The most effective method, and also the most fun (especially if you are in company), is to throw the bag at each other: the more you manipulate it, the better the internal mixture mixes and cools.
When you open the large bag, the ice cream is finally ready.
Possible variations to the recipe
The base can be enriched with a sachet of vanillin, or with the seeds extracted from a vanilla bean, for a more intense scent. Those who prefer to avoid dairy productscan replace fresh cream with vegetable cream, without compromising the final result in any way.
The ice cream should be consumed immediately, or it can be stored in the freezer for up to three days.
Ice cream in a bag is not an elaborate recipe, and it doesn’t even aspire to be one. AND a practical and engaging way to approach the preparation of a cold dessertalso useful for explaining to children how certain natural phenomena work. Shaking a bag for twenty minutes does not require particular skills, of course, but it is capable of returning a concrete and genuine result.
For those who want something more structuredthe same base can be processed in a traditional ice cream maker. But in that case the nicest and most homemade part of the creation is lost.
