Honey Lavender

Rating: ****
From this Epicurious recipe.
No sugar, just 2/3c honey.
2t dried lavender flowers.
Steep flowers in hot cream for 15 min. then strain.

I used milk instead of half-and-half, also didn't measure the lavender.
Came out very soft and creamy. Mom's favorite so far.

Lacey and I made this with lavender we picked in Portland and dried on the dashboard of the van on the drive back to California.

Cookies 'n' Cream

Rating: *****
Straight from Ben & Jerry's book, page 88.
I added about 4 oreos more than the suggested 1 cup.
Way better than store-bought C&C.
(Made this for Rowyn's game night.)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip

Rating: *****
From Ben & Jerry's book, combining:
Jerry's chocolate, page 45
Chocolate chip variation, page 45
Peanut butter variation, page 47
Awesome!
(Would be better with mini chocolate chips, though, instead of regular.)
(Made this for Rowyn's game night.)

Key Lime

Rating: *****
Here's the About.com recipe I used.
1.5c cream
6 egg yolks
15oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/2c key lime juice (8-10 med. limes)
simmer cream, then beat into egg yolks
stir over low heat to thicken
cool, then stir in condensed milk and lime juice

Didn't have key limes, so used regular (8 "large").
Didn't seem limey enough at first, but was good once frozen.
Condensed milk comes in 14 oz cans, so I added 1/4 cup more cream.
Also crumbled in 3 graham crackers at end of machine cycle (this is a must!!!)

Strawberries with Chocolate Swirls

Rating: ****
Ben & Jerry's Sweet Cream base (pg. 28) + 2t. vanilla
Strawberries as in strawberry recipe (pg. 54): 1 pint (chop small, no mashing) + 1/2 lemon juice + 1/3 c. sugar, sit in fridge for an hour.
Chocolate sauce: 2/3 c. semi-sweet choc chips, + 1/4 c. milk (should have been cream)
Start the basic ice cream in the ice cream maker.
Add strawberries at end, no juice, no mashing.
Pour out ice cream into container, mixing in chocolate sauce and strawberry juice as you go.
Ended up kind of melty, but maybe because weather was so hot when we made it.
Also, looks kind of messy. Good in concept, but not very presentable.
Next time, try just making thin layers of ice cream and sauce, without really mixing much. There are probably some tricks to doing this.

Ginger

Rating: ****
Regular vanilla base (e.g. from Ben & Jerry's), no vanilla bean.
Grated in one little chunk of fresh ginger, added about a 1/2 tbsp of powdered ginger.
Diced some candied ginger and added at end.
Seems to get more gingery after it's frozen.
Also, seemed to get kind of grainy, maybe from sugar off of candied ginger? And from the chunks of fresh ginger?
Next time: skip fresh ginger, use more powdered, see if can get candied ginger w/out extra sugar on it. It's delicious but really wants to be smoother.

Pumpkin

Rating: ***
From this Elise.com recipe.
We wanted to make more than a quart, but not double it, so we sort of fudged all the amounts up a bit.
Tastes basically like cold pumpkin pie. Don't know what else I was expecting, though. I'd have rated it higher if I cared more for pumpkin pie.

Tapioca

Rating: ***
Follow regular tapioca recipe, except no egg whites, and more sugar (3/4 cup instead of 1/2).
This is best fresh out of the ice cream maker. Once it's fully frozen the pearls get kind of hard and less pleasant to eat. And there's a really weird cognitive dissonance eating tapioca in ice cream form, which is kind of distracting.

Blueberry Lemon

Rating: **
Miriam's request, during a visit.
Lemon base: 2 T. butter, 2 eggs, 1/2 c. sugar, 1/2 c. fresh lemon juice
Thicken by simmering in double boiler for 15 min.
Cool a few minutes then mix in 1 c. each milk and cream, 1 t. lemon extract
Refrigerate till cool.
Mash up 2 c. blueberries, mix into base.
Optional: grate lemon zest into mix while churning.
NOTES: the plan was 1/2 cup sugar in both lemon and blueberry parts, then changed to 1 c. in lemon only, but accidentally only did 1/2 c.
Next time do the full cup, probably all in lemon, or split.
Used soy milk and cream, might be creamier if used real stuff, or all cream (as in orig. recipe).
All these things probably would have helped the rating.

Brown Sugar Sour Cream

Rating: ****
Recipe from Desert Candy.
I used a tad less sour cream, because that's what I had.
Would add more brown sugar next time.

After I made this, I was informed that dipping strawberries in sour cream and brown sugar is a popular dessert, though I'd never heard of it. So it might be fun to make an ice cream like this that includes strawberries as well.