Do you make it? Favorite recipes? Tricks or tips? Fond memories?
I recently mentioned to my husband that I’d like to try my hand at ice cream (largely due to fond memories of my grandfather making peach ice cream for me - “boughten” just doesn’t taste as good!) Therefore, Tony surprised me with a churn. I’ve looked up a zillion recipes on line, but I hardly even know where to begin!
(Oops - I already reported for forum change!)
So moved.
I have the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream recipe book and I’ve found it to yield excellent results. I don’t really go looking for other recipes (there’s 3-4 different methods in the book).
You get the best product from using loads of heavy cream and top-quality add-ins, which is not cheap. 
Its not cheaper than buying B&J (or any superpremium ice cream) at the store! The fun is getting the exact flavor you wanted. My masterwork was “chocolate chocolate chocolate, mint mint mint” – chocolate-mint base with chopped andes candies and thin mints. nom!
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I’ve done it, and it’s very nice. Usually if I’m going to make homemade ice cream, I make lemon–the kind that is basically heavy cream beaten into lemon curd. Pretty sinful, and pretty hard to buy from the store.
I don’t care whether I can buy cheaper than I can churn - like you, I want to get the flavor I’m after! (Besides, back porch parties will be that much more fun with an ice cream churn, right?) That Ben & Jerry’s recipe book sounds like what I’m after.
I’ve also found recipes for grown-up flavors of ice cream. Apparently the “secret” to making alcoholic treats is to thicken the liqueur with gelatin before adding to ice cream mixture - who knew?
Yes, alcohol is tricky because it’s basically antifreeze. You can only use a small amount and still get your ice cream to freeze. Now if you use gelatin as a thickener, you can use a little more alcohol but, if you go too crazy you’re going to end up with the mouthfeel of a frozen jell-o pop (if you remember those, they were good, but slightly slimey).
Sorry I didn’t include the link to the book in my first post:
To avoid the granular ice crystals which can frequently form in homemade ice cream, replace part of your sugar with some form of liquid sugar. It can be corn syrup or maple syrup, for instance. I usually took out about 1/4 cup of white sugar and replaced it with an equal amount of corn syrup. Voila - no more crunchy ice granules in the vanilla bean ice cream.
The best book I’ve found is Ice Cream!: The Whole Scoop by Gail Damerow.
Some general advice:
Make your base stronger flavored and sweeter than you think it should be. Once you’ve turned it into ice cream, the cold temperature will dull the flavor.
Watch your butter fat percentages. This is a key factor in how your ice cream turns out. You can adjust the percent by mixing milk and cream. You’re more likely to make it too low and end up with ice cream that tastes “thin” but you can make it too high and end up with ice cream that tastes like butter.
As others have said, alcohol will make it harder to freeze your ice cream.
If you’re adding ingredients like berries or cookie crumbs, freeze them before you put them in the base. If you add them in at room temperatures, they’ll get smashed into mush by the churning. On the other hand, if you’re adding ingredients like bananas or peaches, cut them up into bite-sized pieces or they’ll jam up in the blades during the churning.
Homemade ice cream has a lot less air in it than commercial ice cream has. You’ll find that smaller servings will fill you up (and have more calories). And if you put leftover homemade ice cream in your freezer, it will get much harder than commercial ice cream.
But watch out if you use honey. It often gets grainy when it freezes.
Which is excellent if the ice cream is being made ahead of time for an outdoor potluck dinner. It’ll still be about ¾ solid by the time dessert is served.
A few summers ago we had an ice cream social, and lots of folks brought homemade ice cream. Someone brought banana ice cream. I’d made caramel sauce, and we had toasted walnuts. Put together, this sundae was the best freakin’ thing I’ve ever eaten.
You don’t even need a churn, if you use the right ingredients. All you need is a big mixing bowl, a wooden stirring spoon, milk, cream, sugar, flavorings, and liquid nitrogen. It’s even more fun than the old-fashioned way, it’s quicker, and you can give a science lesson in the process.
Liquid nitrogen? In a household that includes moi (Frau Klutz,) Boy 2.0 (voted Most Likely to Blow Up the Chemistry Lab - Intentionally, Class of '16,) and two pre-school-aged Destruct-O-Matics?
Yeah… no. :eek:
Good tip on how to treat solids, Nemo, and Sattua, that lemon curd ice cream sounds amazing!
Alton Brown’s recipe from the “Premium” Ice cream episode of Good Eats: Recipe here. If you flavor it with anything strong, cut the sugar by a tablespoon or two.
My personal favorite (and the favorite of pretty much everyone I offer it to): baker’s chocolate cut into chunks 2-3 times as large as a chocolate chip and thoroughly smashed Werther’s Original Toffee hard candies (they’ll soften and smooth in the ice cream, so you won’t be cutting yourself).
Add the toffee right when it gets off the stove (so they’ll melt a bit in the hot ice cream), and the chocolate during or stirred in after churning so that it doesn’t melt. Yes, that’s unsweetened or very lightly sweetened chocolate – don’t worry about it; there’s plenty of sugar in the ice cream.
Three recommendations:
My wife’s favorite ice cream is Pistachio. This is the recipe that she seems to like the best. Note that some of the pistachios are steeped in the hot milk mixture to extract their flavor. They are then strained out and discarded. This is critical to getting the right taste. Plus, you can eat them instead of throwing them away.
My favorite flavor is Toasted Coconut. Again, the toasted coconut is a sacrificial ingredient. Even if you don’t like the flavor or texture of coconut, you might like this ice cream – toasting the coconut mellows the flavor and the actual coconut is removed before you churn the ice cream.
Finally, one flavor that no one expects, but that everyone likes, is Burnt Orange. This is an adult flavor, not because it contains alcohol, but because of the complexity, with a hint of bitterness. Even if you’re skeptical, try it – it will surprise you.
The Ben and Jerry’s book is great but my favorite has to be The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. Every recipe I’ve tried has been fantastic. He has a blog too with more recipes.
I stirred some of my homemade blackberry jam into one of his chocolate ice creams from the book - the most blissful creation I’ve ever constructed. Totally worth the calories.
I need to get my ice cream maker back out.
The best one I’ve made is actually an attempt to reconstruct a Toscanini’s flavor (since 3000 miles is now too long a commute): ginger snap molasses. Molasses ice cream with chunks of ginger snap cookies. Best to let it ripen for a few days so the ice cream can penetrate the cookies a bit. It is very popular when I bring it to gatherings. I’ve thought about another version where I use a ginger snap pie crust and fill it with molasses ice cream, but I haven’t tried doing it yet.
One unusual one I made was grape ice cream. I don’t recall the recipe but it had Welch’s concord grape juice being mixed with cream. It came out this really amazing purple color. Everyone enjoyed it and we wondered why grape ice cream isn’t more common.