Making homemade ice cream is a luxurious treat because there are endless options for customizing flavors and getting creative with experimental ingredient combinations. For an easy approach to creating your own ice cream, try making the ice cream in a blender. The process requires very little prep and only enough time to let the mixture freeze, meaning you can have any flavor of ice cream within an hour. While homemade ice cream can sometimes be icy, a few ingredients and tricks can help prevent that from happening, resulting in a smoother, creamier frozen dessert at home.
Homemade Ice Cream Recipe
Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes | Prep Time: 10 minutes | Serves: 4
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup cold whole milk
- 1/2 cup nonfat dry milk powder
- 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 4 ripe peaches, sliced
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 2 (8-ounce) glasses ice
Directions:
- Combine the whole milk, milk powder, heavy whipping cream, sugar, peaches and almond extract in a blender.
- Blitz the ingredients for 30 seconds to combine while purifying the fruit.
- Add the ice and blend until smooth, up to two or three minutes.
- Pour the mixture into a self-sealing plastic container.
- Place the container in the freezer for roughly one hour, checking the consistency after half an hour.
- Serve when the desired texture is achieved. For soft-serve, less time will be required than for a stiffer ice cream.
This homemade ice cream recipe can be used as a base and flavored with any combination you can think of, such as spicy Mexican chocolate, mint chocolate chip or even s'more ice cream. If adding mix-ins, simply add them after the base is blended so the bits and pieces are not lost, such as the chocolate chips in mint chocolate chip or the marshmallows and graham cracker pieces in a s'more ice cream.
Tips for Ice Cream in a Blender
Making ice cream in a blender is so fast and easy because it is simply combining ingredients, mixing and freezing them, which allows the chef a lot of freedom to customize the recipe. For example, a healthy spin on ice cream can be made by substituting frozen bananas for the sugar. Overly ripe frozen bananas are quite sweet naturally, making them a great healthy swap without compromising taste or texture.
Another tip for making perfectly smooth ice cream at home is to take advantage of properly preparing your ingredients. Milk can be poured into an ice cube tray and frozen ahead of time. This keeps the ice cream from tasting icy because it adds more dairy without adding more liquid. The blender is strong enough to crush the ice or frozen milk so that the ice cream will not have an icy mouth feel.
Similarly, using powdered milk is a vital step in creating rich and creamy homemade ice cream because it increases the amount of dairy in the recipe without increasing the amount of liquid. If there is too much liquid in the homemade ice cream base, the ice cream may become icy when left in the freezer overnight. Powdered milk is the key to creating just the right ice cream texture.