Beat the Heat With A Treat: Home-made Frappucinos and Fun

Where I live, things have gotten out of hand with the temperature these days. If your students have to put up with any heat at all, you might want to consider making your own delicious treats, or, better yet, put the students to work on this delicious chemistry project. I assure you it is quite edible at the end.

All you need is a fairly sturdy blender, and a few people who like ice cream. There are many ways to make these delectable treats, and here I will offer a few of them, though combinations for additional flavors will be limited only by our imagination(s).

First, the basic frappucino "floorplan" includes ice and milk. Be careful to add just enough milk to help the blender chop up the ice a little. Then add two heaping scoops of your favorite ice cream, or you can whip them all together if you start with a small amount of ice cream, adding as you go. This part of the experiment controls the "thickness" of the drink, so don't overdo it out of (quite understandable) ice cream zeal, or you will put the motor to the test, and maybe tend to overheat the poor mechanical worker.

If you put a little ice cream in with the milk and ice, this may make the job a little less noisy at first, since the ice cream provides a cushioning effect for the ice, which when being chopped quite naturally will jump up and down hollering -- (they get noisy) wouldnt you?

Then comes the fun part -- Additives. Depending on which kind of ice cream you opt for, you will want to add different flavors. For instance, if you decide to toss two large scoops of cookies and cream into you milk and ice base, then you might wish to toss in a handful of something that goes well with chocolate -- like handful of those small and addictive peanut butter cups that come in a 2 lb. bag. At the end, you may need to add a little more milk to thin out the batch, using the "frapee" button to whip your drink into a frothy and sweet masterpiece.

This is culinary chemistry at its finest.

Below I will list a few combinations you might wish to try, or at least think about using to develop your own better combinations.

If you go with vanilla ice cream, you can add almost any flavor you want, including the addition of fresh fruit combinations, like strawberries, pineapple, cherries or whatever flavor you like best. Fruit combinations are almost unlimited, and if you are careful, you can even add a vegetable of two in a sweet fruit mix (with vanilla ice cream it makes a strawberries and cream, or peaches and cream flavor no child should be without (no adult either for that matter). The veggie you can sneak in without notice if it is the right kind.

The flavor I prefer involves coffee, so adults may wish to skip this one for kids, though the amount needed is very slight for the flavoring. I use either vanilla or (preferably) cookies and cream (ice cream), then add one tablespoon of freeze-dried coffee -- it matters not which because the additives overrun anything but the most basic "coffee flavor" -- then I toss in a handful of junior mints -- one of my favorite mints, though peppermint patties work just as well and I imagine cable car mints would do just as well. Andes mints (flat mints) I have not yet tried, but suspect they can make anything taste good.

If you do not like mint (most people do), consider simply using the cookies and cream with coffee, and perhaps you might want to add a little spice -- cinnamon or nutmeg -- from the spice cabinet, but go light on it. You cannot "un-add" a spice if you put too much in, but you can always add more later if you don't land enough in the mix the first time.

When you chop the ice, you will want to select a slower speed from the buttons on the left side of your blender. As the cubes become smaller, you can work your way to higher speeds, and smaller fragments, until you puree them at the end. My mint-coffee frappucinos were a raging hit in the neighbor where I grew up, before ere a starbuck's existed.

I know from experience that most of the fun is in the making of it, of which children have no end when you call for suggestions, and allow them some input into the recipe formation process. It also gives all the tasters a little boost for studying (or else running about outside) and no one ever died from a tasty treat overdose so far as I know (at least not in one sitting).

Other possible flavors to add include syrups (you can buy almost any flavored syrup at the store now), and anything used for baking -- from chocolate chips (white chocolate and maple chips exist too), and of course stores carry every imaginable flavor of ice cream to start with. So you can even make yours a pralines and cream frappucino. You can also buy flavored creamers -- they have hazelnut, irish cream, and the like -- to use for flavoring.

I like mocha-mint frappucinos, and probably always will. But I have never had one I didn't make, with a few other sets of little hands to help. Days that are too hot can always have cool surprises. Clean-up is a breeze too (if you do it right).

Experience tells me you will need a considerable number of plastic cups, and dishing out the goods represents the messiest part. I usually ended up making two blenders full before the ice cream was gone and many small mouths were lit by smiles. The neighborhood had quite a few youngsters, and I was a fairly fast chef.

Older children can, of course, come up with some pretty great ideas on their own, and you may want to put the teens in charge of clean-up. But the first time around, some adult should call the shots, until everyone has an idea of how the frappucino routine is supposed to work.

And whatever you do, avoid drinking your frappucinos too fast -- lest you encounter the Brain-freeze to end all brain-freezes. Never freeze your brain. We already have global warming, and do not need to add cerebral freezing to our mix of environmental disasters.

And remember, you can go as fancy as you want, or just keep it simple. Some folks just like strawberries, milk, ice, and vanilla ice cream. This makes a fresh-strawberries and cream frappucino. Oranges and peaches are good for this too. Or Experi-mint and enjoy, like I did.

Ice-treats can help you beat the heat.