Homemade ice cream quick picks
Ice cream machine: Cuisinart 1.5-Quart Frozen Yogurt ICE-21P1
No-churn mixer: Cuisinart Power Advantage Plus 9-Speed Handheld Mixer
Ice cream scoop: Zeroll Original Ice Cream Scoop
Ice cream cookbook: “Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream Book: Classic Flavors and New Favorites”
Making completely customizable, homemade ice cream always sounds like a good idea in theory. But between endless hand cranking and a soupy result that isn’t what you’d imagined, the process can leave you feeling less than satisfied, even if you own one of the best ice cream makers. We’re here to report that making ice cream at home that’s as delicious as it is easy is totally possible. We spoke with two food-blogging couples, the duos behind Two Peas & Their Pod and A Couple Cooks, to get the secrets behind making delicious ice cream at home.
How to make ice cream with a machine
Sonja and Alex Overhiser, founders of the food blog A Couple Cooks, have played around with getting their vegan ice cream as creamy as regular dairy and have learned a few tricks. First, use full-fat coconut milk as the base. Adding cornstarch helps thicken it, and agave syrup in addition to granulated sugar keeps it sweet but not gritty. Here’s what you’ll need to bring their popular chocolate vegan ice cream together:
- 2?15-ounce cans of full-fat coconut milk
- 2 tablespoons?cornstarch
- 1/3 cup?agave syrup
- 1/3 cup?granulated sugar or coconut sugar
- 3 1/3 ounces?vegan dark chocolate, 70% cocoa
- 1/3 cup?cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons?vanilla extract
Once the ingredients are combined and warmed in a small saucepan, then chilled, they go straight into an ice cream machine for 15 minutes. The Overhisers recommend freezing their vegan ice cream for at least four hours for those who prefer a harder consistency. For more in-depth instructions and tips, you can view the full vegan ice cream recipe on their site.
“Alex and I don’t eat 100% vegan, but we love vegan ice cream because it’s a little lighter and just as creamy,” Sonja Overhiser says. Another advantage to the vegan ice cream? The ingredients are all shelf-stable, meaning you can stock up and make ice cream whenever the craving hits.
If you want to make this same base but in a vanilla version, the Overhisers suggest leaving out the cocoa powder and chocolate and adding more vanilla. Starting with either a basic vanilla or chocolate base will also give you room to experiment with different add-ins. Add peppermint extract and chocolate chips to make it peppermint chip, or mix in peanut butter to make a chocolate peanut butter ice cream. You can check out more variations on their website, but that’s just the beginning.
The biggest thing to consider when making ice cream is time. It can take more than 24 hours from start to finish, even though most of that is hands-off, like freezing the ice cream bowl overnight. Many recipes will also call for combining the ingredients over heat to mix them well, then allowing them to cool before adding to the machine. Then, once the ice cream is churned, it goes back in the freezer to set to a hard consistency.
Sonja Overhiser prefers to make homemade flavor with the help of an ice cream machine. “A quality ice cream maker is important to us,” she says. “We’ve been burned by a low-quality maker that made melty ice cream, so we made sure to get a new one that would hold up.” The Overhisers uses this Cuisinart machine since it’s a one-and-done setup — no rock salt or additional supplies needed. The device can churn ice cream in about 15 minutes, although you will need to do some planning ahead because the removable bowl needs to be frozen overnight.
We also recommend this Cuisinart ice cream and frozen yogurt maker, our best tested pick. We liked that this machine gave us a balance of price and performance, delivering creamy ice cream at a fairly reasonable price tag.
How to make no-churn ice cream
You can also make ice cream without the machine. In fact, one of the benefits of no-churn ice cream is that it requires less advanced planning since there’s no need to chill or cook ingredients ahead of time.
Fans of savory-sweet combinations can check out this no-churn Salted Caramel Toffee Pretzel ice cream from Two Peas & Their Pod, founded by Maria and Josh Lichty. Here’s what you’ll need to grab before you get to mixing:
- 1?can?or 14 ounces of sweetened condensed milk
- 1/4?cup?plus two tablespoons salted caramel sauce, divided
- 1/2?teaspoon?pure vanilla extract
- 2?cups?heavy cream, cold
- 1/2?cup?chopped pretzels
- 1/2?cup?chopped Heath candy bars
Start by whipping cream until high peaks form (around three minutes). Fold in the sweetened condensed milk using a rubber spatula, then add the mix-ins. Finally, pour the mixture into a loaf pan and freeze for at least six hours. You don’t have to add sugar to this recipe because the condensed milk is already sweet. You can even make the base chocolate by stirring in cocoa powder with the cream before whipping it. For more in-depth advice and tips relating to this recipe and more, view the full no-churn instructions on the Lichtys’ blog.
However you make your ice cream, the real fun is finding new favorite flavor combinations or discovering how to make your all-time favorite flavor at home.
“Go with your gut!” Sonja Overhiser says. “There’s really no wrong answer.”
The hardest part of making homemade ice cream is the waiting, but the easiest part is definitely the eating. We’ve collected some of our best-tested, top-rated and favorite supplies for whipping up delectable ice cream treats any day of the week.
If you don’t want to buy an ice cream maker quite yet, or you don’t have the space for one, consider no-churn ice cream, where whipped cream is folded in with condensed milk and flavorings and then frozen. Maria Lichty of Two Peas & Their Pod uses a KitchenAid mixer with the whisk attachment.
To go the extra mile with your stand mixer, you can add this ice cream maker attachment set from KitchenAid, which comes with a specially designed bowl and dasher paddle to ensure that every mix-in is thoroughly incorporated.
If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can also make ice cream and whipped toppings with a hand mixer. This nine-speed version from Cuisinart is our best-tested pick for its sturdy, easy-to-use design and powerful mixing ability.
Homemade ice cream tools
Your homemade ice cream can be eaten immediately after mixing if you like a more soft-serve texture or you can freeze it in a loaf pan for a more scoopable consistency. Lichty recommends this nonstick loaf pan for freezing her no-churn ice cream.
For smaller batches or more experimental specialty flavors, opt for these quart-sized reusable containers. Every member of the family can have their own personal tub with these containers that are also dishwasher-safe and come with matching silicone lids to prevent freezer burn.
What good is your homemade ice cream if you can’t scoop and serve it? The Overhisers’ favorite scoop is this one from Balci with a pointed end that helps you more easily dig into hard, frozen ice cream.
This Zeroll scoop is a popular choice for scoop shops and ice cream vendors due to the heat-conductive liquid in the handle that uses your body heat to more effortlessly scoop and release ice cream.
Homemade whipped cream is far tastier than the stuff from a can. Whip some up at home by using a whisk attachment on a hand or stand mixer, or have it freshly aerated on demand with this handy whipped cream dispenser. Just be sure to also grab some nitrous oxide chargers to fluff up the cream in the canister.
What’s better than a freshly made waffle bowl to craft your homemade sundaes in? Use your favorite store-bought or scratch-made waffle mix in this Dash waffle bowl maker for a tasty serving dish in just a few minutes.
If you’d rather not go through the labor of making waffle bowls from scratch, you can always grab these ready-to-serve ones at Target.
For those who prefer regular bowls to waffle ones, this set of four pastel bowls will help to beautifully showcase your home-crafted treats and help distinguish whose ice cream is whose too.
Use this pair of hot fudge and salted caramel sauces from Coop’s for topping off sundaes or adding a flavorful streak to your ice cream mixes. Each jar features a decadent sauce made with organic and gluten-free ingredients.
For a pages of sweet inspiration readily on hand in your home, try this beloved bestselling recipe collection that explores the classic flavors you know and love and the more experimental ones that will expose your taste buds to new wonders.
For those looking for nondairy ice cream options, try this recipe book from Deena Jalal, founder of the plant-based ice cream shop FoMu. Using a creamy coconut milk base, you’ll explore flavors like Peanut Butter Mud Pie and Matcha White Chocolate.
You can now try the innovative flavors of Van Leeuwen, an ever-expanding scoop shop started in the streets of NYC, in your own home with this book featuring over 100 recipes of both vegan and dairy flavors.
