Halloween - Halloween Ice Cream Recipe

Halloween provides a great excuse for family and friends to get together, eat together and have fun, especially the children. Many people eat a traditional pumpkin pie on Halloween and that's fine but how about a special Halloween Ice Cream? If you use pumpkin in any of your cooking, just save some (about 12oz or 300g), cook it and use it (mashed) along with some maple syrup in this great Halloween Ice Cream recipe.

There seems to be an automatic association of pumpkin with Halloween but do you know why that is? I didn't until recently. Apparently, the tradition of hollowing out a pumpkin as a lantern at Halloween is an old Celtic custom, brought to the USA by Irish immigrants and 31 October is the New Year of the traditional Celtic calendar.

Also what do you and your children actually know about the pumpkin itself? I had always thought of pumpkin as a vegetable but I was wrong! Its botanical classification is actually that of a fruit; maybe that's why it works so well as a dessert when you come to think of it. Pumpkin is also the state fruit of New Hampshire and in Keene New Hampshire there's a Pumpkinfest every October - this year it's October 20. To read more visit the Pumpkinfest link (Wikipedia).

Homemade Ice Cream - The Easy Way

There's no question in my mind that homemade food is always the best - being able to select the ingredients yourself and having it fresh just when you want it, but that is providing you have the time. After all, many recipes require time and patience often with a several step process involved. So what do you do if you don't have much spare time but still want homemade food? Well, with ice cream there are a few quick and easy recipes you can use.

Here are the quick and easy ice cream recipes that I've found work well:


vanilla ice cream
chocolate ice cream
banana ice cream


The banana ice cream recipe is a particular favorite in our house. I recently made a video of me making it in our kitchen so you can see just how quick and easy it is. Visit this page to view the video (my vanilla ice cream making video is also on there)
http://www.ice-cream-recipes.com/ice_cream_videos.htm