No Energy Ice Cream

I know its pedantic but...you did call it NO ENERGY ice cream.
How is the ice made at home if not by refrigeration in an electric or gas powered refrigerator (Solar stirling engine prehaps?)

So how do you make the ice?

No electricity??? Where exactly did the ice come from?

Common guys, be careful with green-washed products like this. OK, using ice from your freezer is probably more efficient than a powered ice cream maker, but a perpetual motion machine this is not.

We use two recycled coffee cans, one big one and one small one. Put the cream mixture in the small one, put the lid on and duct-tape it closed. Put the small can insode the large one. Put the ice (dug from your pond in the winter, of course :^)) with rock salt around the small can. Put the lid on and duct tape that closed as well.
Kicking encouraged! No weak over-designed plastic ball to distroy, and you can always use the cans for holding paint as you spruce up your house in the fall.

According to ApartmentTherapy, these are available in the US from L.L. Bean.

http://kitchen.apartmenttherapy.com/food/gadgets/ice-cream-ball-010965

That was exactly what I was going to say! ;)

Daithi asked:
> So how do you make the ice?

You could pedal it from the ponds of Massachusetts.

Just sayin'.

-Gomek, the bike-ice king

I have seen this in the LL Bean catalog, as well.

So basically use my Grandfather's ice cream mixer with the handcrank?

I love it when people "discover" an environmentally correct way to do something that's been around for a hundred years. ;)

My kids LOVE this thing! We take it camping so we can have ice cream by the fire. Yes, you have to procure ice, but you have to do that anyway for the cooler, so it isn't much more effort.

If you've harvested the ice from a frozen lake in the winter and stored it in an icehouse until you use it, then you could really use this device to make ice cream with no electricity. My hunch would be that using ice from an electric freezer to make ice cream this way might be less efficient than buying ice cream in the store, but that's just speculation since I'm not equipped to calculate the energy costs of transporting frozen ice cream vs. transporting refrigerated dairy, and so forth.

Aside from energy issues, I think ice cream from this ball has some advantages over store-bought ice cream (to somewhat echo the original post): home made things can be more fun, you get to control the recipe, and you get some activity (rolling the ball around) to make it, which are all good things.

We use to do this in girl scouts [way back when] using 2 coffee cans [larger one with rock salt & ice and smaller one inside with ice cream stuff] and roll it back and forth for about 40 minutes to make ice cream. OoooH! No energy ice cream AND recycling!

Wow I am amazed at the idiocy of comments here. People this is just a way to get you away from eating the Ice Cream (Crap) you buy in the stores. The machine doesn't claim to have it's own secret cooling technique, you obviously have to put in your own ice.

It works the same way the typical High School science experiment works, where rock salt melts ice, and to speed up the reaction, you need to get the molecules moving faster. In this case, this is done by moving around the ball, where in our science experiment we just had a bag to throw around.

The point Bonnie makes with the no electricity, is that with typical ice cream you buy in the stores, they use an incredible amount of energy, in the form of electricity to freeze the cream. With this ball, the only electricity that might be used is the automatic ice maker some people might have in their freezer. If you just have trays, like I do, then the ice you put into the ball was not made with electricity, thus no electricity was used to make the ice cream.

And who said anything about discovery. I think Bonnie's point was that this invention makes ice cream a whole hell of a lot easier than your "Grandfathers" thing. Come on people, stop and think for a second before running your fingers on the keyboard.

Plus, as I intimated above, it's FUN! And you can do it outside, where the green is...

We did the same thing at Girl Guide camp when I was a kid. However, instead of a specially made ball, we re-used cleaned out cans/jars.

I remember using the old hand crank ice cream maker - that was a lot of fun.

But this ball looks like even more fun.

It's $46 USD from the site linked in the article (the store is in the UK), but you can get it cheaper if you're in the US from these two sites. Or just search "Ice Cream Ball".

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=pd_sl_aw_tops-1_blended_9287224_2/104-3350645-3569558?search-alias=aps&keywords=ice%20cream%20ball

http://www.rei.com/online/store/ProductDisplay?storeId=8000&productId=47793013&link=1&cm_mmc=ps_google-_-Camping-Hiking-_-cookware_ice_cream_ball-_-ice+cream+ball&text=1&catalogId=40000008000

i think you guys wrote about this before:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2004/12/campers_dream_i.php

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editor note: Indeed we did. We only noticed it after it was online, but we figured that since the first post was from 2004, few current readers would have seen it.

You must be an old-schooler ;)

There's nothing "magic" or innovative here. This is based on the same concept that the good old hand-crank ice cream makers used. This one is just more expensive. Here's a much better solution:
http://www.amazon.com/Back-To-Basics-10-minute/dp/B00083BGX4/sr=1-96/qid=1154113408/ref=sr_1_96/102-5355477-5805762?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen

It *is* an innovation over the hand crank makers - it is portable, totally easy to clean, and FUN.

Webs, easy there. I don't know about you, but my freezer doesn't get cold unless I give it electricity.

> it is portable, totally easy to clean and FUN

Hmm, a hand crank is portable and easy to clean.

I doubt if either are particularly fun since it takes a lot of energy to correctly stir the cream as it freezes so that you get a nice blended icecream.

You can do the same thing with a set of large and small coffee cans with the lids (or similar containers). Put the ice cream mixure in the small can, then put it inside the large one with rock salt and ice around it. Shake it or roll it back and forth between two people on the floor for 15 minutes and voila.

For zero energy.. wait until a cold winter day and chip some ice out of a frozen pond :-)

Well if you make ice regardless, then there really is no added cost with this product. Yes my freezer uses electricity, but the only way to offset this is to not use the freezer, or get rid of it. This will not happen since I need to freeze my frozen goods. When you freeze water to make ice, the amount of extra energy used, versus not freezing ice is negligible, and my roommate and I both want ice, so we are making ice anyways. So using this product versus buying ice cream from the store will offset the electricity used to make the ice cream you would buy in the store. Therefore eliminating the cost and use of electricity, since in my case the ice will be made regardless.

What about the fact that it is made of plastic and is basically a luxury item to begin with? I mean, how many times are you going to use this thing before it is just another storage item? At least it is small.

To the poster who wrote of using frozen lake water, I would not recommend drinking any water that comes from a lake because you will get sick. That is one great things about the environmental devastation we have done to the world, all natural water sources on the earth are now too nasty to drink straight. Be careful.

The item does look like fun, but we should really be aware that if you buy this you might have Affluenza. But there are much worse plastic things you could buy.

I'm thinking that based on some of the comments on this page, certain people could power thier freezer by simply plugging it in to thier frosty attitude.

Obviously, some people like it if for no other reason than kids think it's cool. Yes, it's a gimic. Don't like it; don't buy it.

Jim Robb: I wouldn't call the ball weak and overdesigned. My 8 year old son and his friends have really put it through the proverbial wringer (another eco-friendly appliance, btw) and it is as good as new.

Bob: You should watch my kids roll and shake this thing - it is FUN! And I have to argue that it is smaller and lighter than a hand crank, so therefore more portable.

Anonymous: To the poster who wrote of using frozen lake water, I would not recommend drinking any water that comes from a lake because you will get sick. That is one great things about the environmental devastation we have done to the world, all natural water sources on the earth are now too nasty to drink straight. Be careful.

The ice never touches the cream. Ice is used as a catalyst to speed up the process of freazing the cream, but because it sits outside of the cream it makes no difference if you use the natiest ice in the world, it will never touch the cream.

I have a question about which is really better, an electric maker or a salt and ice design, and I'm hoping someone here will have an ecologically sound answer: What do you do with the salt water when you're done?

Lara: if you want an answer for ecology reasons than simply use the salt and ice design. If like me you use your freezer to make ice already, then there will be little wasted energy in using salt and ice.

But if you have access to alternative energy, than using the electric maker will not make a difference. But really the question should come down to the practicality for you. If you have kids, get something like the ball so they can have fun. Or do the method of getting a gallon zip lock bag for the ice and salt, and a smaller bag for the cream. Then all you have to do is throw the bag around till the ice melts and freezes the cream. I would recommend the latter to do with kids just as much as the former, so they can learn about the science behind it, and see the cream freezing.

If you don't have kids though and just want some ice cream use the eletric one. Me personally I like the creamy-ness of using salt and ice, it turns out like a frozen yogurt. EMMMM!!!!

Ok lets look at this No energy Ice cream.

First salt is not heart healthy
second the Ice came from where?

Did you visit an artic shelf lately?

This is truly more than green washing.

Thanks I'll pass.

D~W
Heart conscience and green!

Wow, some of y'all above just don't get it.

See, SOMEHOW you're going to have to make temperatures fall. This WILL happen with electricity, at some point. It doesn't matter whether it's ice from your fridge, ice-cream maker, industrial-size machines, etc., somehow energy has to be taken out of your ice-cream batter, and that takes energy. I'm sorry, no matter what warm thoughts you may be keeping for the environment in your heart, you just can't break the law of conservation of energy, it just won't happen.

Now if you really want to get environmentally friendly, and if you consume ice cream on a regular basis, just buy the damn thing in a store. Use of electricity and ingredients are things that are valued by the ice-cream maker. They are probably going about the freezing of ice-cream with the most energy-efficient machines they can afford within a price range way beyond ours, plus they distribute a lot of the environmental fixed cost between thousands of consumers, as opposed to just those in your and your family, so in the end, the lower price of store-bought ice-cream also represents the lower energy and environmental costs of making it.

Of course, this argument doesn't work for every product, and I haven't thrown in the environmental costs of transportation, and maybe other significant ones I'm not considering (doubtful). But I imagine on the whole they are still probably lower than a town of 4000 people making that many more shopping runs in their cars for ice cream ingredients they wouldn't be buying otherwise.

And by the way...it is made of plastic and where does plastic come from...thanks Saudi Arabia.
.
As far as the salt and water. We just pour our salt water out into a collection bucket (yet another petrochemical product) and let it evaporate and reuse the salt.
D~W...pay attention now...the salt goes on the ice not in the ice cream mix.
here is a neat trick
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k746r425522l85kl/

Also D~W. the crack about the artic shelf ...
Prior to the little ICE AGE the vikings had a wonderful life on a nearly ice free greenland and traded as far west as alaska (remeber the tale of the northwest passage, turns out it wasn't a fable, just broken dreams caused by global cooling). Yes the climate is rebounding from a abnormally cool period but it part of the NORMAL global climatory cycle. Man is really egotistical if he believes he can control the weather or the climate. Adapt the only true hope. Oh I love the savage hurricane season we are having.

About the ice cream maker. If the intent of the ice cream maker is to be environmentally friendlly, why hasn't anyone mentioned the obvious ? The most damage to the environment is not caused by the electricity but by the production of the millk! Electricity would be a moot point if we all became vegans.. How about toffuti?

Holy crap! People are still talking about this? OK...

A good freezer can be used in a very efficient way. See the Rocky Mountain Institute for details. Freezing food can reduce spoilage, you can freeze locally-produced fruit n vegs in the summer to eat them in the winter...

Best of all, as you remove stuff in the winter, you can replace it with ice you made in your back yard, which improves performance by increasing thermal inertia...

My freezer seems much more efficient than the supermarkets', with their big glass doors that never shut properly. Or worse: does your store use the open-chest ones? Both also require the supermarket to turn up the heating, half the year...

Also, check the package...where was your ice cream made? Have you calculated the impact of transporting your ice-cream half-way across the country in a freezer car?

Does your ice cream warm up at all, on your way back from the store? Imagine the amount of heat transfered from my -2C ice cream as I walk the 15 mins home from the store, on a 30C day?

With this ball, I can use locally-produced organic cream, honey, or maple syrup (glucose syrup for me!) and the raspberries I just picked in my parent's backyard.

But most of all, it is, as they say, FUN. I'm not saying this product is the solution to all our problems. It seems like a small but intriguing and enjoyable part of the solution. If being green means being a miserable SOB, then we'll have failed.

good article

Excellent article its realy helpful, keep up the good work!
Thank you.