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April 7, 2004 9:14 PM

I just bought a Cuisinard ice ceam maker and there are way too many recipes on the internet to wade through. So those with ice cream makers: what are your killer ice cream recipes?
posted by adrober to food & drink (14 answers total)

Make frozen margaritas. Lots and lots of 'em. Pick up bottles of fruit nectars to experiment with -- blackberry, pear, etc. Just remember that you can't add the liquor until very close to the end of the cycle or they will stay very liquidy.

If your instruction book has a chocolate ice cream recipe that is about ten times as complex as the others (lots of eggs, lots of cooking first), I recommend you not really bother with it. While the results are good, you can make a great chocolate ice cream just by using the "normal" recipe with a very high quality (70% or whatever) chocolate. Just use simple, fresh, high quality ingredients and you'll be quite happy with the results.

And try not to think about the fact that cream, vanilla & sugar are more expensive than a store-bought pint of Haagen-Dazs would have been.
posted by bcwinters at 9:42 PM on April 7, 2004

Milk, cream, vanilla bean scraped out, and sugar. Leave the pod in while it's heating, then strain out. The mix must be COLD COLD COLD before you start.

Any added ingredient is... unnecessary.

[ash] I admire its purity. [/ash]

Oh, okay. Take a Dairy Milk bar and freeze it. Whack it into little bits in the blender or food processor. Fold the bits and dust into your already delicious ice cream. What you get is like chocolate chip ice cream, but a jillion times better.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:17 PM on April 7, 2004

hmm well i cant say i have any suggestions for ice cream recipes. I do know of someone that would though; my culinary idol, Alton Brown.

He has an episode all about ice cream, "churn baby churn". (Theres three recipes that are pretty simple and really good on that page). Its better if you see the show rather than just read the recipes, but i suppose you could read the transcript. Or perhaps you would like a book? /sales pitch
posted by bob sarabia at 11:43 PM on April 7, 2004

cinnamon! mmmmm a scoop of it over a heated banana brioche. Slice o' heaven!
posted by yoga at 5:41 AM on April 8, 2004

I'll have to fish out Raymond Blanc's prune and armagnac ice-cream recipe when I get home. Hopefully he won't mind me posting it here. :-p

My golden rule with ice-cream is to take it very, very seriously. No frivolous milk-ices - base everything on a beautiful rich, thick, real egg and vanilla custard. Don't dilute or otherwise adulturate with cream or milk - just frozen custard. Absolutely awesome rich, silky texture, but very bad for you.

If your machine has two settings, always use the slowest one or you'll end up with Mr Whippy (and no-one wants that).

You might find it tough to get the temperature quite right if you have one of the machines where you freeze the bowl. It's easy to get it too cold, so that the mixture freezes to the side of the bowl quite quickly and crystallises. The easiest way around this is to take the bowl out and leave it at room temperature for 5 minutes (not too long though, and disregard if you live in Texas or something).

Don't overfill the machine or it won't freeze properly and you will cry.

The other recipe I often make is champagne sorbet. 50% champagne, 50% light sugar syrup, a lightly whisked-in egg white and the juice and zest of a lemon and whack it into the machine. I actually find it works better to use a nice, slightly sweet vin mousseaux than decent champagne (I use Clairette D'die because we have piles of it). I doesn't really taste like champagne in the end, but it is very refreshing and extremely nice. Good with some nice tart raspberries or something.

What else. Hmm... Oh yeah! I've got two fantastic, but slightly downmarket recipes that I nicked from Nigel Slater. One for a creme fraiche ice that goes fantastically well with a chocolate cake or similar, and one for lemon and sheep's milk yoghurt ice. I'll try to remember to fish them out and post them over the weekend.
posted by bifter at 5:48 AM on April 8, 2004

My dad loves to make ice cream based on recipes from Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book. The Heath Bar Crunch is tasty!
posted by LeiaS at 7:19 AM on April 8, 2004

i hope you do post those recipes, bifter . . . they sound great. does anyone else have trouble with getting the ice cream thickened enough (w/ the cuisinart machine - i.e. frozen bowl-type)?
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 10:42 AM on April 8, 2004

does anyone else have trouble with getting the ice cream thickened enough

There are two factors involved:

1) make sure that the mixture has been refrigerated for a couple of hours at least before you put it in the machine (this also gives the flavours time to mellow) - you want it COLD before it gets ice-creamerized.

2) those machines aren't intended to give you finished ice cream, they give you soft serve texture - you have to freeze the ice cream for a while before it's truly finished (use single or double serving sized containers, that way you don't get partial defrosting and the resultant big ice crystals which ruin the texture from taking the whole batch in and out of the freezer all the time).
posted by biscotti at 11:30 AM on April 8, 2004

I am not LeiaS's dad, but I also dearly love the Heath Bar Crunch recipe in the B&J's ice cream recipe book.
posted by briank at 11:53 AM on April 8, 2004

(warning, family connection) My parents sell cooking/candy and cake making stuff by mail order, and are starting to carry the stuff of fudge/raspberry/other fruit/caramel stripes. Very good and requires nothing more complex than vanilla ice cream as a base.
posted by whatzit at 12:41 PM on April 8, 2004

I have had an ice cream machine for a while and still force myself to use it often enough to justify it taking up shelf space. Usually I find store-bought to be better than what I can make at home. The real advantage is I can made frozen deserts that have exactly the ingredients I want like, very low or no sugar, %100 pure ingredients, raw milk, raw eggs. You never get that in store bought simply because it is illegal, but that is how it used to be made. There are lots of ice cream books the B&J one mentioned above is a classic.
posted by stbalbach at 4:44 PM on April 8, 2004

I've taken a basic sweet cream base and added cooked, well-drained pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice to make awesome pumpkin ice cream.

When the girlscouts were doing their cookie sale recently, I made a mint ice cream with added thin mint cookies, and chocolate with tagalongs.

When berries come into season make sorbets. Here is a recipe for Cranberry Sorbet which is awesome, especially when you drop a spoonful of it into champagne. It's also a good basis for any sorbet: berries cooked and strained, sugar syrup to get the right sweetness, lemon juice to keep color and to adjust tartness. That's pretty much it. Kiwifruit sorbet is delicious and has a freakish nuclear green color.
posted by plinth at 5:46 PM on April 8, 2004

I made this several years ago. It's great. I bet that if you used Pernod instead of Ricard, you wouldn't need food coloring.

French Ice Cream with Ricard (Pierre Franey)

Base:
3/4 Cup sugar
5 large egg yolks
1 cup milk
2 Cups heavy cream
1 split vanilla bean, or 2 tspn pure vanilla extract

Ricard:
2 Tbsp Ricard (or more to taste)
dash of green food coloring

1. In a mixing bowl beat the sugar and egg yolks with a wire whisk until the mixture has a bright lemon color. And 1 Cup of milk and stir.

2.In a wide saucepan combine the egg mixture with the cream. Add the vanilla bean or extract. Stir constantly, scraping the bottom with a wooden spatula. Bring the mixture to 180 degrees as measured by a rapid reading thermometer. Do not let it boil! Drain the mixture immediately into a stainless-steel bowl.

3. Remove the vanilla bean and add the Ricard and food coloring. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator, stirring occasionally before placing it in the ice cream machine.

4. Follow the instructions on your ice-cream machine.
posted by kenko at 7:54 PM on April 8, 2004

Thanks everyone for the tips!

I went for a simple vanilla bean for my first time out and it was amazing. I recorded the experience on my website.

I'll definitely try some of your recipes next. :)
posted by adrober at 10:38 PM on April 8, 2004