The classic ice cream recipe is called M E S S- - - - -Milk, Eggs, Salt, Sugar. I use either half and half or heavy cream with a little whole milk added to get the consistency right. Some people prefer to cook the mix a little to avoid any problems with using raw eggs, but nobody who has eaten my raw egg mixture has croaked from food poisoning yet. I use a motorized freezer with holes in the canister lid and add chunks of fruit just before mixture freezes all the way. Putting the fruit in at the beginning of the cycle usually ends up with it getting completely pulverized- - - -I like peaches, strawberries and especiallty home grown blackberries a little chunky in the finished product. One of my friends has a 3-gallon hand cranked freezer that he powers with an antique single cylinder "hit and miss" pony engine. It's very popular at the car shows he attends.
I made the mistake of putting cutup strawberries in too soon the first time I tried making homemade ice-cream with fruit. While the strawberries didn't 'pulverize' they instead froze hard as a rock and was like eating pebble ice cream. Wound up having to spit the strawberries out one by one so as not to risk chipping a tooth.
