To make beautifully creamy, smooth and tasty ice cream at home you do NOT need an electric ice cream maker, you do NOT need to keep taking your ice cream out of the freezer and whisking it, you do NOT need any special equipment, you do NOT need to spend ages working hard. In less than fifteen minutes you can prepare delicious ice cream ready to go in the freezer with no more work required until you dip your spoon into the tub the next morning (or whenever you choose to eat it.)
Makes: About ¾ tub of ice cream based on a Walls’ tub – 180 x 150 x 80mm (7” x 6” x 3”)
Level: So ridiculously easy that I’m almost embarrassed to offer it as a recipe, but it’s so good that I simply must
Time: Honestly, you could prepare the basic ice cream in 10 – 15 minutes before freezing it. Adding flavourings might require another 10 minutes.
Need: For the times mentioned above you will need an electric hand held mixer or a stand mixer. It can be done whisking by hand but will take longer.
Ingredients
- A 500ml – 600ml tub of double cream (US – Heavy cream)
- A can of condensed milk (usually 397ml)
- Some Flavourings
Method
1. In a large bowl whisk the double cream to soft peak stage
2. Add in the condensed milk and whisk again.
3. Stir in the chosen flavours*
4. Tip into an ice cream box with a lid and place in the freezer overnight or until set solid.
* Examples of flavours/extras
a. ½ jar of stem ginger, chopped + half a jar of syrup
b. Some vanilla bean paste
c. Raspberries (Could be pureed or simply added in with a light whisking)
d. Raspberries and white chocolate (Either grate in the chocolate or use small pieces
e. Vanilla and white chocolate
My wife has made the stem ginger version and it was lovely. She’s also made a blackberry version, which was nice, but a little “sharper”. I’ve made the raspberry and white chocolate. It came out quite well, but needed more raspberries, probably at least 125g. I could only get 50g from our garden and couldn’t be bothered to drive to the shops to buy any. I tried adding freeze dried raspberries, but it was less than satisfactory.
I hope you give this terrific recipe a go and let me know what you think via the contact page. For many more lovely recipes click on this link.
A later version
Since posting the original recipe I’ve been out in my local area blackberry picking, so had to make some blackberry ice cream. Once again, it’s really simple: blitz about 50g – 75g of blackberries and stir gently into the ice cream. Don’t stir a lot, otherwise you’ll loose the ripple effect. Then add in the same amount of whole blackberries and have another gently stir.
To show that I can’t stop making this terrific ice cream here’s another version that “I made earlier”. As before, the base ingredients remain the same: 500g cream + tin of condensed milk. Same method too. For this one I added a blob (let’s not get too technical here) of vanilla bean paste then about 125g of glace cherries (rinsed and quartered) and about 100g of broken up chocolate bars. I wanted to use flakes, but couldn’t get any, so I used Cadbury’s Wispa bars. The end result was lovely: rich creamy ice cream + firm & chewy cherries + lots of little lumps of chocolate. I considered adding pistachios, but didn’t. I’ll leave that (for now) so that you can give it a go.
Also, as I type this, Christmas is only a few weeks away, so maybe I’ll make something similar with cinnamon and other Christmas spices. Mmm, and I wonder if sweet mincemeat stirred into the base ingredients would work.
Latest (just before Christmas)
The answer to my question above is YES. Mincemeat certainly does work. All I did was make the normal mix of double cream and condensed milk. I stirred in three or four teaspoons of Christmassy spices. I used cinnamon, ginger and mixed spice (but “other spices are available”) then I tipped in about three-quarters of a jar of mincemeat. I was surprised how easily it blended into the ice cream mix, which was slightly disappointing as I wanted some chunks visible in the mix. To remedy this I blobbed the remaining third from the mincemeat jar into the bottom of my ice cream tub and simply covered in the mixture. I also added some orange zest and a little vanilla extract. The result: a very Christmassy, very tasty, very easy ice cream. We had it with a warm frangipane pithivier.
And now it’s almost summer:
Similar to all that’s above – I whisked the cream, added the condensed milk and whisked to somewhere between soft and stiff peaks. Then I stirred in half a bag of desiccated coconut (probably about 100g) and three chopped Bounty bars. Now, as I type this, it’s in the freezer and will have set perfectly by morning. I intend serving it at our church’s Alpha meal to accompany the Banana, Chocolate & Walnut Galette that I’ll make.
Retired Bloke on Food n stuff 