This week’s recipe sounded wonderful and I was so excited to try it. I thought this would give me an excuse to buy an ice cream maker, because that is one gadget that I don’t have in my kitchen. I was talking to my sister and mentioned the recipe and she said that she had an ice cream maker that she had gotten as a wedding present (her oldest daughter is 12) and only used once, but I was welcome to borrow it. I thought this would be a great way to see if I would like using one of the machines and then I could buy one if I thought I would use it frequently.
Becky gave me the machine last night and said that all I had to do was freeze the inner container, put in the mix, and turn on the machine and I would have gelato. Well, the unfortunate thing about wedding presents that are not used frequently, is that sometimes all of the pieces aren’t together when you need to use them. Since I had never used one of these before I thought everything was great. Process about 1 pound of ripe bananas then add in sugar, milk and rum. Mix well and then put into the ice cream maker. Turn on and then wait. The machine started turning and I thought this is great. In about 10 minutes I noticed that the outer rim of the mixture was freezing onto the container. At that point the middle of the mixture was still room temperature. That is when I started worrying. To make a long story short, I ended up manually being the paddle for the rest of the churning time. It seems that these machines won’t work right without one. Imagine that!

The good news is that even though the gelato was not as firm as I think it should have been, due to the machine malfunction, the flavor was wonderful. Zachary and I couldn’t wait until dessert to try it, so we actually had it for a late afternoon snack and we both loved it. Now, I will be looking for a machine to buy and trust me I will be checking for the paddle before I take it out of the store!