A perfect union: What's more American than homemade ice cream and root beer?

There's no better time to enjoy cool, creamy ice cream than on Independence Day. Especially if you declare your own independence and make it yourself.

Homemade ice cream doesn't necessarily save you money, when you're buying quality ingredients such as heavy cream and pure vanilla. But there's the idea of being able to control the product, and the creativity of designing your own flavors.

And if you're having a party, ice-cream making is one of those novelty cooking activities that tends to draw attention (especially if your ice-cream maker has a loud motor).

People are curious and want to watch the canister spinning around in an ice-packed machine. If you've got an old-fashioned hand-cranked machine, well, you can call on everyone to take a turn.

A fun idea that doesn't require a machine is "kick the can" ice cream, where the ice cream is churned by rolling around on the ground. You can buy a round, sturdy soccer-ball replica in some camping/sporting goods stores. It has an inner canister for the creamy mixture, surrounded by a compartment for the ice and salt.

Or, try the recipe using a 1-pound can and a 3-pound can, as outlined in Dian Thomas' "Fun at Home" (Thomas Publishing, $14.95).

Scientifically, ice cream is a complex structure of ice crystals and fat globules. Done right, the frozen mixture has a smooth texture, not a coarse, grainy one.

Some recipes call for eggs, which are cooked into a thin, rich custard before churning.

Air is incorporated into ice cream during the freezing process; it's called "overrun" in commercial ice cream. This is why you don't fill the canister to the brim before you turn it on; you need to allow space for the ice cream to expand.

Without air, ice cream would be a dense, frozen brick. Ice cream with a little air in it is dense and creamy; a higher overrun gives you very light, pillowy ice cream.

Home machines incorporate less air into the mixture than big-batch commercial machines, so your homemade ice cream is likely to be more dense and creamy than what you'll find in the store.

To get in the July 4 holiday spirit, we started with a basic vanilla ice-cream recipe from "The Dessert Bible," by Christopher Kimball (Little Brown, $29.95).

Then we added some red, white and blue in the form of pitted cherries, coconut and blueberries.