I love homemade ice cream because it's easy to play with flavors and add-ins to make your own unique creation. My husband and I like to come up with names for our ice creams even before they become realities. For the past few years "Crazy Go Nuts" has been our elusive dream ice cream. I say a dream cream because we can never settle on the winning combination of flavor. My vote has always been for a cinnamon base filled with chocolate chunks, salty mixed nuts and a little espresso mixed-in for good measure. On the other hand, my husband wants bananas, chocolate, marshmallow and pistachios to be involved. I guess this summer we'll just have to try out both versions and duke it out to find a winner.
 
To inspire crazy flavors and unique combos, I went into food blog territory to find some real life dream ice creams. For your upcoming bbq or gathering take a stray from the usual vanilla, chocolate and strawberry and put something new in your bowl.
 
Fake Ginger's Birthday Cake Ice Cream
 
Fake Ginger takes the idea of birthday cake and ice cream to a whole new level. Into a regular ice cream base goes some boxed yellow cake mix and a healthy amount of sprinkles.
 
Diet, Dessert & Dogs
 
Is your rhubarb plant overflowing with bounty? Then turn some of that goodness into ice cream. Diet, Dessert & Dogs creates a vegan ice cream with a coconut milk base laden with pink ribbons of rhurbarb swirl. She also subs in stevia for sugar for a natural sweet high.
 
Whisk Kid's Coffee Crunch Ice Cream
 
The coffee crunch ice cream over at Whisk-Kid is perfect for any coffee fiend. The crunch factor comes from a homemade cocoa nib brittle. Yup, a cocoa nib brittle. I'm drooling already.
 
Honest Fare's anise ice cream
 
Although I'm not a fan of black licorice, I think I could be smitten with Honest Fare's anise ice cream. The addition of vanilla bean helps to tame the licorice edge and the ground anise seed is described as "sort of like graham cracker powder dissolving in your mouth". Sign me up! Don't have an ice cream maker? There's no reason you should be left out. David Lebovitz describes a simple method involving a custard base and a bit of vigorous whisking. In about 2 hours, you'll have a smooth and creamy treat without having to put out the cash for a new machine or sacrificing precious counter space.
 
Frozen Treats from ReadyMade's Summer Issue
 
Don't forget there's also many great recipes in the Summer issue of ReadyMade, including an Spiced Apple Ice Cream and a Strawberry-Cinnamon Frozen Yogurt! There's now no excuse for not whipping up a creative batch or two of homemade ice cream.

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