Blog:A Good Reason for Homemade Ice Cream

As some of you know, I'm a huge Good Eats fan and hands down my favorite recipe is his 9, 8, 3, 2, 1 formula for premium ice cream. As he said, it'll save you money. While probably more expensive than cheaper ice cream, as Alton's said in the original, "Good stuff ain't cheap. Cheap stuff ain't good." So how much do you spend making this? Well I decided to do some math as best I could from my grocery receipt, so it may not be a hundred percent accurate plus, different stores may have different prices. But here's what I got. Also I left out vanilla extract because I was give a big bottle of mexican vanilla by a family friend so I don't know the price. If I make a mistake I'll list the full item at full price in case I made a mistake and someone better at math than me can fix it. Here are the results:


 * 9 ounces sugar = $34 cents from a 10 pound bag of sugar costing $5.99
 * 8 eggs yolks = $.75 cents from a package of 18 eggs costing $1.69 (Egg whites are a nice bonus for egg foams)
 * 3 cups half and half = $2.24 from a quart of Kemp's half and half for $2.99
 * 1 cup Heavy Whipping Cream = $2.09 from 1 cup Kemp's Heavy Whipping Cream for well $2.09.

Total: $5.42

Ben and Jerry's: Hah take that, most of our ice creams sell at $3.75 a pint.

Well the recipe mentioned above makes about 2 quarts of ice cream. Let's multiply that 3.75 by 4 shall we. Ahh so to get the same amount of ice cream the homemade got us, we'd have to fork over $15. And keep in mind while this is only for vanilla ice cream, even with flavoring, I highly doubt we'd have to fork over $15 for anything else. Heck an ice cream sundae at a restaurant I go to costs $6.

In fact, let's go even further. Let's divide that $5.42 by 4 and see how much homemade costs per pint. Rounded up it costs $1.36 a pint, which is $2.39 less than Ben and Jerry's.

Ben and Jerry's: What further hell could this psycho have for us?

Literally every wiki user ever: Oh boy, now you've done it.

Grust: Very well Let's take a look at the yearly cost. Since I make my ice cream once a month, I'll take a look at the cost of your ice cream per month as well. In just a year, the $15 I spend on B&J's adds up to $180. Meanwhile in just a year the $5.42 I spent making mine adds up to a mere $65.04. Even if we go by a single pint, B&J's adds up to $45 a year Vs. homemade which adds to a mere $16.32 a year.

Cheap one gallon ice cream: Well I'm still cheaper. I only cost $5.99 a Gallon.

Well as Alton said, cheap stuff ain't that good. In fact there's a reason why that ice cream is so cheap. While all ice cream are foams, cheap ice cream has much more air pumped into it. Because of that, that gallon sized may fill a bucket, but it's an illusion. In fact, most of what you buy is just air. To prove this point, Alton took a look at two breads and compared them both to ice creams. He took a bread that had smaller and more uniform air pockets and compared that to premium ice cream which felt more velvety on the tongue with enough air that it's not super dense. Then he looked at a rustic bread and noted that the air pockets were bigger and much less uniform. May be good for rustic bread, but not so much for ice cream.

In fact I get so much satisfaction from 2 scoops of homemade ice cream than I do with cheap. With cheap I need 4 scoops to feel anything, whereas homemade, 2 scoops leave me so satisfied, I don't need any more for several days, so that 2 quarts last a whole month. And when I do have more, I take the time to savor every bite. This satisfaction alone still means I'm saving more money making my own than buying cheaper ice cream.

So with these factors in mind, I think homemade ice cream is a good idea.