Orange Julius Slushies - Ice cream machine

Well, local Washingtonians are not going to fully believe it, but I am here to announce summer is official here! (Step aside Steve Poole).  Most long-time webbed-foot dwellers around these parts know that we don't see the really great weather until after the 4th of July.  Seeing that today is July 8th we are right on time.  One look at the extended 3-week forecast with nothing but happy suns and no clouds to speak of, with highs in the nice and mild 80's is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.  Especially after two rainy La Nina patterns back to back that lasted two long years.  Our girls spent the entire day today happily in the sun.  Besides soaking up some much needed vitamin D, they spent time playing in the back yard, running through sprinklers, splashing in the kiddie pool, catching frogs, and  watching butterflies.

Some of the marvelous creatures found in our backyard today

I was thinking of cracking out our new 2 quart Cuisinart ice cream maker but I knew we didn't have enough heavy cream needed to make a new batch, so I perused the pages and found you can make a number of slushies and frosty beverages in there too.  This is what we decided to try: Orange Julius Slushies

We happened to have the few ingredients needed on hand so we thought we would give it a whirl.  You will need:

Ingredients:

12-16oz Orange juice concentrate (thawed)
2 cups water
1/3 cups sugar
2 cups (1 can) coconut milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tsp vanilla

Put 2 cups of water in a bowl and add the 1/3 cup of sugar.  Stir until disolved

Once the sugar is dissolved.  Add the OJ and the can of coconut milk (plus the 1/2 cup heavy cream) and stir again.  By the way, the original recipe called for 2 1/2 cups of coconut milk and we discovered one can is only 2 cups.  So that is why we added 1/2 cup of heavy cream to make up the liquid difference. You could also use regular milk.  The original recipe also called for 12 oz of OJ, but our Costco sized juice was 16 oz and we just added a smidge extra of water so it wasn't too sweet.

Mix all ingredients together and add the 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

Pour into your chilled inner compartment for your machine and let it go for 20 minutes.

Once you are done, pour a number of frothy glasses of pure orangy goodness.  We topped ours with whip cream and a cherry.  Mostly because it's America and we can do what we want.

This was a nice, thick and creamy treat.  Even thicker than even, dare I say, the actual Orange Julius you might get in the mall, almost more of a milk shake consistency.  We were surprised the coconut milk gave it that perfect hint of "something" that made it very julius-esque.  Hubby was thrilled the Cuisinart had chilled some of the mixture near the edges into almost an ice cream you could scoop. Very cool (literally).  So here's three cheers and a toast to summer time!