Homemade Ice Cream

By: Allrecipes Staff

Although it can be made from just a few ingredients--cream, milk, eggs, sugar, and flavorings--there is something extra-special about homemade ice cream.

Ice Cream Recipes

Adding Flavor

Herbs and spices should be infused into the mixture as you heat the milk. Vanilla beans, lavender, green tea, fresh peppermint, and candied ginger are all good choices.

To get the most flavor from a vanilla bean, split it lengthwise with a sharp knife and scrape the seeds into the milk.
After the bean has steeped, remove the pod and rinse in cold water and pat dry.
"Used" vanilla beans are still powerfully aromatic, and can be stored in a canister of plain granulated sugar to make vanilla sugar.
Extracts, liqueurs and flavoring oils (citrus, peppermint, cinnamon) should be added after the custard has cooled slightly.
Add perfectly ripe fruits and berries to your ice cream base: sprinkle fruit with sugar and crush it with a potato masher before mixing it in. This adds much more flavor than plain chunks of fruit stirred into the mix.
To add nuts, chocolate, crumbled cookies, or whole berries, let the ice cream reach the consistency of soft-serve, and then stir in the garnishes; pack in airtight containers and freeze until firm.

Start with a simple ice cream base or crème Anglaise, and mix in the ripest summer fruits, high-quality chocolate (whether melted and/or cut into chunks), or toasted nuts to create your own flavors.

About the Process

The other ingredients of ice cream--added through the freezing process, not the recipe--are ice crystals and air. Although ice cream can be made without an ice cream machine or old-fashioned hand-cranked churn, it will not have the desired smooth, creamy texture. Just freezing cream and sugar results in relatively large ice crystals that are detectable to the tongue. By agitating the mixture and adding air to increase its volume, ice cream machines make the texture of the finished product light and smooth.

Ultra-premium ice creams have a low "overrun," that is, the volume of air added to the mix. That's why the cartons feel so heavy, because the ice cream is very dense. Some lower-grade ice creams that consist of half air, half ice cream mix have a 100% overrun. Those cartons are correspondingly light.

More about overrun and ice cream

Custard Ice Creams

Ice cream is divided into two basic categories: custard-style (or French custard-style) and Philadelphia-style (also called "New York" or "American"). Custard ice cream is, as the name suggests, made from a custard base. Egg yolks or whole eggs are whisked together with hot milk or cream and sugar, and cooked gently until the mixture becomes thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Egg yolks are natural emulsifiers, and the resulting custard makes an ice cream that is remarkably smooth and rich. Chill the custard for at least one hour before freezing.

Egg-Free Ice Creams

Philadelphia-style ice cream contains no egg yolks and does not require cooking. It's based purely on cream and sugar, and is very delicate-tasting, with so few ingredients.

Ripening and Storing

When the mixture has thickened and is hard to stir, remove it from the ice cream maker and transfer it to a freezer container. While it's tempting to eat it right away, when it's a "soft-serve" consistency, ice cream should be allowed to harden in the coldest part of your freezer for several hours or overnight.

If you have leftover ice cream, however unlikely that may be, store it airtight with a layer of plastic wrap pressed onto the surface to prevent it from absorbing odors.

ADVERTISE WITH US

User Name	Password

Remember me? Forgot password?

Free Membership

Favorite Products