NOW I'm ready for summer!

Remember this?

My darling Kitchenaid mixer, for sure one of my favorite purchases of all time. Well, now it gets even better because I bought one of these!

An ice cream maker attachment for my mixer. Are. You. Kidding. Me. I am so excited to use it. Not that I didn't love the old ice cream maker we had when I was a kid. The wooden bucket that you filled with ice and salt and had to crank for hours and hours (it seemed like hours and hours, I wonder how long it actually took), and to top it all off one of us kids had to SIT ON the thing while someone cranked it to keep everything in place. Oh yes, fun times indeed. But I love and miss home made ice cream and I hope this produces similar results to what I remember so fondly.

But I also bought this

It is filled with wonderful, inspiring recipes that I hope live up to all the excitement I have. First it goes over the basics of ice cream making with an explanation of ingredients and their purposes. Then the recipes. There's the basics (vanilla and chocolate, along with their "Philadelphia-style" counterparts which don't contain egg), then there are the ever so tasty sounding recipes (tiramisu, passion fruit, and super lemon ice creams), and then there are the bizarre sounding but oh so intriguing (strawberry-sour cream, avocado, black pepper, olive oil, and basil ice creams). Have any of you tried anything like this? I'm fascinated! I didn't even mention the sherbets, sorbets, or granitas. And I didn't get to the mix-ins (honey-sesame brittle, buttered pecans, dark chocolate truffles, candied lemon slices), or the vessels (ice cream cones, crepes, lemon-poppy seed cookie cups, chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches)!

Bring on the hot weather, I've got the ice cream to cool me off!