Our favorite homemade ice cream recipe!

It comes from Rival but once again, I don't exactly follow it entirely.  So here's my version of their recipe:

2 1/2 cups skim milk (they say use 2%)
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups milk (they say use half and half)
5 cups heavy whipping cream
1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract

Heat 2 1/2 cups milk on the stove to scalding (bubbles form around the edge of the pan).  Remove from heat and stir in sugar and salt.  Stir in the rest of the milks and vanilla extract.  Refrigerate 1 hour then freeze according to your ice cream freezer's instructions.

This makes 5 quarts of ice cream.

We use this one for good old vanilla ice cream.  Or you can puree 5 cups of strawberries to add to the mix to have delicious strawberry ice cream--no preservatives, no food coloring.

Or for fun we make mint Oreo ice cream.  Increase the vanilla extract to 2 1/2 tablespoons and add 2 1/2 tsp mint extract.  Then at the end of the freezing cycle, fold in about 20 crushed Oreo cookies. (Be careful here. . .overzealous stirring at this point crumbles up the cookies and makes it more of a grey mess than pretty mint Oreo ice cream)

Deeeee-lish!