The Art of Making Ice-Cream Easy and Delicious

The summer of 2022 will be remembered as one of the hottest in many years and the summer I experimented with all things Ice Cream… Peach Ice-cream, Vanilla Ice-cream, Chocolate Ice-cream, Chocolate Raspberry Ice-cream, and my latest creation is a combination of Chocolate Ice-cream swirled with my favorite cookie, loaded chocolate brownie cookies and finished off with a decadent chocolate ganache.

To say I had fun creating new and tasty ice-cream treats would be an understatement. Each time we tried a new combination we were all quite happy with the results. Now this treat is not your old fashion churned ice-cream, I have made ice cream in this manor and it is delicious, but requires alot of time and effort.

At the beginning of the summer I came across a Pinterest post about ice cream made from Sweetened Condensed Milk and Heavy Cream. My first reaction was how bad could it taste with these two ingriedients! But my other thought was, would it really have the same texture and consistency as classic ice-cream. Well I was pleasantly surprised, it has the consistency of a soft serve ice-cream, soft smooth and oh so decadent.

One of our summer projects is to can fruits and vegetables. As I was down in my pantry doing a count of what was left from last year, I realized that we only had 1 jar of peaches left. Not enough to make a cobbler or peach pie, so I decided it would be a lovely idea to use the peaches in my ice-cream, and so began my summer adventure.

The process to make this type of ice-cream is so simple. First you need to decide if you want to make a plain ice-cream, or if you would like it to have something swirled through it. So my first try was with Peaches and then I moved on to raspberries, and my last addition was Loaded Chocolate Brownie Cookie Cumble. I do believe my passion for making this ice-cream will not stop with the end of summer. The possiblities are endless, to name a few, pumpkin, apple pie, carmel crunch, the list goes on and on. Your imagination is your guide.

Once you have decided what your ice-cream will consist of, you must prepare the filling. If you are using fruit, take a 1/3 of the fruit and puree it, I simply use the fruit, I add not sugar and I don’t cook it down. If you prefer your fruit puree this way feel free to use your favorite type of puree. If you want to get creative you can make a type of sauce that you can swirl through the ice-cream, a few suggestions are Chocolate Ganache, Carmel Sauce, Apple Butter. You will set this aside and use it when you putting your ice-cream together.

Making the Ice-Cream is rather simple. Take the sweetened condensed milk, and place in a bowl, if the base of the ice-cream is chocolate, you will add your cocoa powder to the sweetened condensed milk and mix throughly. Then pour your heavy cream into the bowl and either using your stand mixer or hand mixer, blend on a low speed until it is completely blended and then turn the mixer on medium high to high to whip the cream and sweetened condensed milk into whipped cream consistency. Do not over mix, you will make sweet butter. This should take between 4-8 minutes.

Once you have your ice-cream base, it is time to create your master piece!! If you are going to add any filling to your ice-cream, cookies, candy, or fruit, place it into the bowl with the mixture and fold it in until it is completely incorporated. You will want to save a little of the filling if you want to use it to top your ice-cream.

I use a loaf pan to freeze my ice-cream but you can use any type of container that will hold the ice-cream {you could make individual servings if you want to have this as a dessert for a dinner party}. Place a 1/3 of your mixture into your container, using the filling you prepared earlier, take a 1/3 of the filling and drizzle it on top of the ice-cream. Using a fork swirl it around and through the ice-cream leaving large ribbons. repeat taking a 1/3 of the ice-cream and place it on top of the first layer, add 1/3 of the filling and again swirl it around and through, leaving large ribbons. The final layer you will do the same. If you saved any of the filling you can sprinkle on top.

All that is left is to Freeze, it takes at least 5 hours, this will be a very soft ice-cream, if you leave in the freezer overnight it will be very hard. My suggestion is to remove from freezer about 20 minutes before you would like to serve, the texture will be perfect.

As always the most important part of cooking is to enjoy the journey…..