How to Make Homemade Ice Cream

Doesn’t the idea of eating homemade ice cream sound so appealing! The truth is though, many people have never even tried to make it before! I have to be honest and say that until I was researching for this article, I had never made it either. But you can be darn sure I’m saying goodbye to store brought ice cream now (mostly).

What my children and I discovered is that not only is it simple to make, you don’t need many ingredients either. However, in saying so, the possibilities of flavours for your homemade ice cream are only limited by your imagination…

It’s Time to Make Homemade Ice Cream!

You don’t need to run out and buy an ice cream maker. Nor will you need any expensive ingredients. To make the basic version of our homemade ice cream, you will need:

• 400ml of sweetened condensed milk
• 450 ml of cream (aim for cream which has at least 35% butterfat, such as thickened cream or double cream)

Yup, that’s it. Here’s how to make it:

1. Put the condensed milk in the fridge to chill
2. Whip the cream until soft peaks form (I used thickened cream and whipped for 2 minutes)
3. Pour the condensed milk into the whipped cream
4. Keep beating the mixture until it is thick and stiff peaks form (this didn’t really happen with the thickened cream, I just whipped until it was well mixed)

How can you resist from running out to the kitchen and making this now? Well don’t. This is simply the base recipe for the ice cream. Next I’ll cover some of the delicious flavours you could add to it.

Our Favourite Homemade Ice Cream Flavours

One of the nicest things about homemade ice cream, (apart from its taste), is that you know exactly what it is made of. While I’m not going as far as saying it is healthy to eat, I will say that it doesn’t contain any artificial flavours or colours, unless you put them in there. But why would you, where there are so many natural ice cream flavours to try, including:

• Peanut butter
• Vanilla – add some natural essence
• Strawberry – puree some fresh or frozen strawberries, then add
• Peach – puree fresh or tinned peaches, then add
• Nutella – add a few spoonful’s and mix through
• Lemon – a squeeze of lemon juice
• Mint & chocolate chip – some natural peppermint essence and a few sprinkles of chocolate chips make this a firm favourite
• Coconut & pineapple– add a spoon of shredded coconut, some pineapple juice and pureed pineapple

Once you’ve added your flavour, transfer the ice cream to an airtight freezer container. Smooth the top and press a piece of baking paper against the surface to prevent ice crystals from forming.
Freeze for at least six hours and up to 2 weeks (if it lasts that long)! It went down a treat with these 2!

I bet your taste buds are tingling by now! But if ice cream’s not your family’s thing, why not check out some of our other awesome kids’ activities to do instead.