I used to think I didn’t like homemade ice cream. All I had ever had was thin and grainy, and nothing at all like good premium store-bought. During my Science of Food Preparation class this past Spring, we made ice cream in lab one day. We had to wait two days till the next class session to taste it. And it was goooooood.
The grainy, icy, thin tasting churned dessert I had so often had in my youth was simply put, badly done. Cream? Pshaw! Half-and half? Pffft! My Mom used milk. Egg yolks? Scrambled egg ice cream anyone? No more eggs. Let’s just throw some milk, vanilla, sugar and a few peaches in the churn and see what comes out. Blech.
The secret to homemade ice cream as it turns out is time, technique and quality ingredients. This weekend I decided to give it a try and dig the 30 year old Rival freezer we inherited when my in-laws downsized out of the closet. I used Alton Brown’s Vanilla Custardrecipe, because he’s Alton and I trust his recipes and technique. I made the custard base, following the instructions for integrating the sugar into the yolks very slowly until there was no grainy texture remaining, then tempering the yolks with hot cream and half-and-half. Go big or go home, I say.
The base was made Sunday morning and aged in the fridge for about 6 hours before churning. Boy howdy was that freezer loud! I remembered the freezers of my childhood being wet and leaky, so I put it in the sink. But I didn’t remember them being so loud. Of course we were always outside back then. It didn’t leak water, but the freezer motor housing cracked during the last bit of churning when the going gets tough and it started leaking oil. I was able to finish the ice cream, but the poor Rival had come to the end of the road.
I scooped the finished ice cream into a container and put it in the freezer. Taste testing revealed good flavor, but I was not sure how the texture would be. You could eat it straight away, but it was very melty. This is where homemade ice cream hits it’s major flaw. It’s generally made at cookouts or reunions and eaten right there. But hardening it off and aging the finished product for 24 hours transforms it to better than premium store bought in my opinion. My ice cream was awesome.
I just put in an order at Amazon for a replacement freezer because now that I know how good homemade ice cream can be, I want to experiment with more flavors. So the moral of my story is, patience is a virtue. Or something like that. Make your ice cream ahead of time and you will be rewarded with a creamy dreamy heavenly frozen treat. (Or you can use liquid nitrogen and do it all in like 5 minutes…but that’s another show!) So share some recipes and stories with me!
Our family recipe from way, waaaaaaaaaaay back isn’t a cooked custard recipe, but we like it. If you want to make it richer, substiture heavy cream for the half and half, and in place of the whole mile use half and half.
Nine eggs
Three cups sugar
Beat these together until the sugar is dissolved. Add
`1/4 cup vanilla. If you use Mexican vanilla, you can reduce it a little. Beat vanilla into eggs/sugar. Pour in
1 quart half and half and stir into mixture.
Then stir in 4-3/4 cups whole milk.
Chill this mix, then freeze according to machine directions.
My freezer is small so I cut the amounts by roughly 25%, but the recipe can be adjusted for any size freezer.
I posted a couple of mine over here: mocha ice cream and and piña colada frozen yogurt. Add crushed Heath bars to the mocha for a reasonable approximation of Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Toffee Crunch.
Substitute cocoa powder for the instant coffee (and leave out the Kahlúa) for basic chocolate. Add caramel sundae topping and bits of caramel pecan clusters for turtle ice cream.
I’ve also been experimenting with daiquiri ice creams. Start with basic vanilla, add fruit and some rum extract or a tablespoon of real rum. This is where things get interesting: for raspberry, I add a pack of raspberry Jell-o powder. For blueberry, some blueberry pancake syrup.
We went strawberry picking on Sunday afternoon and decided on Sunday morning to make strawberry ice cream for that afternoon’s cookout. Since we were under a severe time crunch I had to skip the custard part - I just let the strawberries sit in sugar for a while, then mashed them up. Mixed with more sugar, all the heavy cream we had on hand (about 3 cups), a lot of half and half (4 or 5 cups), and some vanilla. I was worried that it would be full of ice crystals from the moisture of the strawberries, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was delicious, if still a bit soft after only 4 hours to ripen.
I dearly hope this isn’t blasphemous, but is there any way to make passable homemade ice cream dairy-free? With soy milk, for example?
I have a good old Rival freezer that I haven’t broken out for a couple years, and I really want to use it but the kiddo is allergic to milk.
I will be the voice of dissention vis a vis the texture of milky ice cream…something about melty, sugary, crystally ice cream is what make homemade stuff what it is. If I want smooth and creamy, I’ll go to the store!
Or use that vanilla bean paste that some manufacturers make- that gives you something pretty close to the “vanilla bean” ice cream that Blue Bell (and others, I’m sure) makes, complete with tiny vanilla seeds.
We have one of the Cuisinart ice cream makers that makes about a quart and a half or so- you freeze the container ahead of time, use chilled ingredients, and the machine does the rest. It’s good out of the machine, but kind of like soft-serve. Let it freeze for a while, and it’s terrific.
My favorite homemade ice cream is lemon. It’s just like making lemon curd, but at the part where you’d start adding butter you add cream and half-n-half instead. It’s tart and creamy and wonnnnnnderful.
It’s officially frozen yogurt and not ice cream, but Alton’s Lemon Ginger frozen yogurt is the best thing ever to come out of my ice cream maker. Perfect for eating in the middle of July.
High fat content works best for ice cream so coconut milk is good. I’ve used that in place of heavy cream. Perhaps coconut milk in place of heavy cream and soy milk in place of whole?
I don’t have an ice cream maker. But I have exactly one recipe for ice cream that doesn’t require one - it’s a white chocolate ice cream. It comes out fluffy and yummy. It’s magic - I’ve tried to modify the recipe by using milk or dark chocolate, but it gets too dense.
Anyone else make ice cream without an ice cream maker?
Would love to have ice cream when camping. What do you folks do to make ice cream without electricity? I saw some at Amazon. Hand cranked models for $100’s of dollars. Is there a cheaper alternative?
My kid’s preschool class made ice cream in a contraption that was basically a plastic hollow ball inside of a larger, insulated ball. The cream and sugar go in the center ball, which screws closed. Then you place it in the larger ball with ice and salt. Toss/roll the ball around for 30 minutes or so, open it up, and voila! Ice cream!
Not quite the same thing, but I’ve made lime/coconut sorbet quite successfully. Coconut cream, coconut milk, and then - you put the lime in the coconut and shake it all up. (Even better if you use the lime zest, too.) My lactose-intolerant BIL was a happy camper.
You need some ice, salt, gallon and quart ziptop bags, and you ice cream ingredients.
Put your ingredients in the quart size and seal. Fill gallon size half full with ice and add salt. Place ice cream bag into ice bag and seal. Hand it to a kid to shake and smoosh for 5-8 minutes or so. Eat right out of the bag.
I find custard difficult, but it is possible to make good ice cream without it, with proper technique (and something like corn syrup or honey to keep sugar from crystallizing). I made lapsang souchong ice cream that way, and I think it turned out fine (no one else in the house would try it, but that’s because they don’t like lapsang).
The stuff from the hand-crank machine is good, but it can’t compare to liquid nitrogen ice cream. Basically, you take all your standard ingredients (milk, cream, sugar, and whatever flavoring you’re using), put them in a big bowl, and pour in liquid nitrogen while stirring constantly. When you can’t stir it any more (after about 10 seconds), it’s done.