Have you ever made homemade ice cream?
This week I got a bee in my bonnet. This happens a lot – I’d say I get a weekly bee and once it is in there I just can’t get it out! Well this week, can you guess what the bee was? Yep, it was to make homemade ice cream sans ice cream maker.
If you have been following here for a while, then you will know I am all about that #nokitchentools life. But alas, this week I caved and bought a hand mixer…I’m so glad that I did because this is my new favourite little toy! I figured that if I was going to make homemade ice cream without an ice cream maker, then I had better have something to help me out! Lucky timing for me, this little KitchenAid Hand Mixer was on sale at Canadian Tire so I scooped it up.
I scoured the internet for homemade ice cream recipes and found that most of them were pretty similar so I went to it. I have to say, I had pretty low hopes with this. I have made frozen yogurt before and I am the first to admit that the texture kinda sucked (it was freezer burn-y) so I was half expecting that same icy texture again.
SO happy to report that this recipe is incredible! The texture is perfect and it is truly truly truly the most delicious ice cream I have ever eaten! The only downside is that it this not an overly healthy option. I always like to offer a slightly healthier option than the norm when I share recipes here, but, since it was my first time making homemade ice cream I wanted to stick with what I knew to be safe. So, if this is your first time trying to make ice cream too, I might suggest the same – these milky products almost guarantee success! Saying this, I am going to experiment with some coconut milk recipes to hopefully make something delicious that has a bit less sugar. For now, I am practicing ‘everything in moderation’ and enjoying this stuff (the real deal!), because it is really darn good!
Okay. Enough chatting, let’s get to the recipe!
Ingredients for Homemade Ice Cream:
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 can condensed milk (400ml approximately is ideal)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- First, using your hand or standing mixer (or a fork or a whisk if you’re like the ‘old me’) whip the cream until it has a thickened whipped cream texture. When you remove your whisk the whipped cream should create ‘soft peaks’, as the true foodies call it ;). With my hand mixer this step took 5 minutes on level 4, and with a whisk that used to mean 15 minutes of very aggressive hand mixing (and Dan and I switching off every 3 minutes!)
- In a separate bowl, whip the condensed milk and the vanilla together. I did not mix this as vigorously – I only mixed this for about 2 minutes until I felt the vanilla had thoroughly combined.
- Combine the two mixtures. At this point, you could consider your ice cream complete and this will make some seriously delicious vanilla ice cream. Should you wish to flavour your ice cream now is that time to do that. If you will not be adding flavours, jump down to step 5 to finish.
- Add toppings should you wish. I made 2 flavours – cookies and cream where I put crushed Oreas (7 cookies total) into the mixture, and a peach flavour which is shown here. So, if I am giving you all the info, the cookies and cream was better. The peach was delicious but due to the fact that the peaches have water in them the peach chunks fell to the bottom of the mixture and the final ice cream texture was not consistent. Still delicious though. My advice? Play around with flavours but know that toppings with water in them (ie. fruits) will not be as consistent. Next time I plan on making a s’mores flavour with graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate. With this vanilla base you really can’t go wrong!
- Transfer your mixture to a loaf pan – metal or glass will work well for this. This mixture filled a 9″x5″ pan perfectly. Cover the top of the pan with aluminum foil and place your ice cream in the freezer. Allow it to chill until frozen (the most difficult part!). I left mine over night and it was perfect by morning (but I had a few impatient bites around hour 3 and they were divine too ;)).
- Serve up on it’s own or with toppings. I hope you enjoy this homemade ice cream as much as I did!
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