Mimsy Were the Borogoves

Food: Recipes, cookbook reviews, food notes, and restaurant reviews. Unless otherwise noted, I have personally tried each recipe that gets its own page, but not necessarily recipes listed as part of a cookbook review.

Ice creamy: more no-churn ice cream recipes

Jerry Stratton, June 21, 2023

I did not expect to write a follow-up to Ice cream from your home freezer. That post already has eight recipes for ice cream. Why would I possibly need any more?

What I didn’t realize is that “need” doesn’t enter into it when it comes to ice cream. Vintage ice cream is more about the adventure than the product. I enjoy ice cream, and when I see a new recipe, I want to try it. I’m not alone. Glen Powell on Glen & Friends did an entire summer last year of nothing but condensed milk ice creams. I’ve got two of my own condensed milk ice creams here, as well as an evaporated milk recipe that’s nothing short of incredible.

I don’t own a dedicated ice cream freezer. Every one of these six recipes, like the previous eight, require nothing more than the freezer compartment that most refrigerators already have.

What makes these stand out is how incredibly creamy they are. The Betty Crocker Outdoor Cookbook has a Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream that is very similar to John Humphries’s Saffron Ice Cream in my previous post but it vastly ups the cream content. All of the ingredients are approximately at ⅔ of Humphries’s ingredients except the cream, which is more than doubled.

Vanilla Ice Cream

Vanilla Ice Cream

Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 5 hours
Review: Betty Crocker’s New Outdoor Cookbook (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

  • ½ cup sugar
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 3 egg yolks, beaten
  • 1 tbsp vanilla
  • 2 cups whipping cream

Steps

  1. Mix the sugar, salt, milk, and egg yolks in a saucepan.
  2. Stir constantly over medium heat just until bubbles appear around the edge of the mixture.
  3. Cool to room temperature.
  4. Stir in vanilla.
  5. Freeze until mixture is mushy and partially frozen.
  6. Whip cream until soft peaks form.
  7. Beat partially frozen mixture until smooth.
  8. Fold in whipped cream.
  9. Freeze 3-4 hours or overnight, until firm. Stir thoroughly at 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, and 120 minutes.

I will continue to consider parfaits as ice creams as long as they are creamy, frozen, and contain lots of cream. In the Betty Crocker Dinner for Two cookbook there’s a very simple Vanilla Peppermint Parfait that is, in fact, just Vanilla Parfait with peppermint sprinkled on top.

It’s a very simple recipe with very few ingredients, mostly egg and cream. If you keep cream on hand, you’ve almost always got the ingredients for it. And, not only is there no leftover white or yolk, because it’s meant for two there are no leftovers at all.

Betty Crocker’s Dinner for Two Vanilla Parfait

Vanilla Parfait

Servings: 2
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Review: Betty Crocker’s New Outdoor Cookbook (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

  • 1 egg, separated
  • ½ cup whipping cream
  • 1-½ tbsp sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Steps

  1. Beat egg white until stiff.
  2. Whip cream until stiff.
  3. Beat egg yolk with sugar until fluffy.
  4. Fold all ingredients together.
  5. Pour into refrigerator tray and freeze 4-5 hours or overnight.

While it’s technically against the grain of that cookbook—the point of “Dinner for Two” is cooking in lower amounts so that two people don’t end up with lots of leftovers—I usually double the recipe. I like of leftover ice cream in my freezer.

I’ve also started taking tentative steps into using evaporated milk. For the most part, evaporated milk is a shelf-stable replacement for both milk and cream. This Chocolate Ice Cream from Mary Lee Taylor’s cookbook for the Pet Milk Company, Tempting Low Cost Meals, is similar to the Peppermint Stick Ice Cream in my previous post.

It replaces both the milk and the whipping cream in that recipe with evaporated milk. I’m guessing that because it also replaces a cup of crushed peppermint sticks with six tablespoons of sugar and two teaspoons of vanilla, it has a lot less sugar. It is very chocolatey, and well worth a try. That extra ice cream in my freezer as I write this? Pet Milk chocolate ice cream.

Chocolate Pet Milk ice cream

Chocolate Pet Milk Ice Cream

Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 1 hour
Review: Tempting Lost Cost Meals (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup evaporated milk
  • 6 tbsp cocoa
  • 6 tbsp sugar
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ½ cup evaporated milk
  • ½ cup water
  • 4 oz marshmallows
  • 2 tsp vanilla

Steps

  1. Chill the cup of evaporated milk until icy cold.
  2. Whisk the cocoa, sugar, and salt together in the top of a double boiler.
  3. Stir the ½ cup of evaporated milk and ½ cup of water into the cocoa mixture.
  4. Heat the cocoa mixture over boiling water until smooth, stirring constantly.
  5. Chill in the refrigerator.
  6. Mix the vanilla into the cold cocoa mixture.
  7. Whip the icy cold cup of evaporated milk with a rotary or electric beater at high speed, until stiff.
  8. Fold whipped milk into chilled cocoa mixture.
  9. Pour into a freezer bowl and freeze, without stirring, overnight or until firm.
Chocolate ice cream sandwich: Chocolate ice cream sandwich, made with coconut oatmeal cookies and chocolate evaporated milk ice cream.; chocolate; cocoa; sandwiches; ice cream

Pet Milk Chocolate Ice Cream is very good as part of an ice cream sandwich with coconut oatmeal cookies.

Because of its lower fat content, evaporated milk needs serious chilling to whip. “Chill until icy cold” the recipe says, but I’d add to keep the bowl chilled, too. I have the model of Kitchen Aid that lifts the bowl when working, so I take a large soup bowl, fill it with ice cubes, and slide it under the Kitchen Aid bowl when whipping cream.

This recipe is a reason for keeping evaporated milk on hand. It keeps creamy and soft in the freezer. It can be removed and eaten immediately, without a pit stop in the refrigerator as most homemade or commercial ice creams require. It has become my favorite chocolate ice cream.

Tempting Recipes also has a version of the recipe for a “hand-turned freezer”. It’s the same recipe, except that the larger amount of evaporated milk doesn’t need to be chilled before putting into the churn.

Oddly, there’s another recipe in Tempting Recipes that I tried, for vanilla ice cream, and it was nowhere near as good. Unlike the chocolate recipe, it calls for no added sugar, relying entirely on whatever sugar is in the marshmallows. It ends up being a weirdly dry ice cream, lacking texture and flavor.

The traditional route for quick ice cream is to use that magic ingredient, sweetened condensed milk. The basic recipe is to combine condensed milk with whatever flavorings you want, chill it, and then fold in whipped cream.

Aniseed brittle ice cream

Peanut Brittle Ice Cream

Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 45 minutes
Review: Magic Short-cut Recipes for the Automatic Refrigerator (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

  • ⅔ cup sweetened condensed milk
  • ½ cup water
  • ½ tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup whipping cream
  • 1 cup crushed peanut brittle

Steps

  1. Blend the milk, water, and vanilla thoroughly.
  2. Chill in refrigerator.
  3. Whip cream to a foamy, fluffy thickness.
  4. Fold whipped cream into condensed milk mixture.
  5. Pour into freezer bowl and freeze to a stiff mush (1-2 hours)
  6. Scrape mixture from sides and bottom of pan.
  7. Beat two minutes.
  8. Fold in peanut brittle.
  9. Smooth and return to freezer for one hour or until frozen.

If you simply want vanilla ice cream, triple the vanilla to 1-½ teaspoons and leave the brittle out. You have, then, a simple three-ingredient ice cream with no eggs, ready for serving in a few hours.

Magic Short-cut Recipes has an entire page of variations (which is where I found the Peanut Brittle version) for different flavors. It’s easy to make your own variations: decrease or even omit the vanilla and add whatever flavor you want. I suspect that the almond variation (almond extract in place of vanilla, with finely shredded almonds folded in) and the ginger variation (omit vanilla and add chopped candied ginger) are especially good, and I’ll be trying them this summer.

I made the peanut brittle version with aniseed brittle (PDF File, 1.4 MB), and it’s amazing. I love the flavor of aniseed, and it’s great as the crunchy bits in ice cream. I also recommend my own Lone Star peanut brittle adapted from The Deplorable Gourmet.

If you want both the magic of condensed milk and the custardiness of egg, Magic Short-cut Recipes also has a recipe for Frozen Egg Nog which is the same as the basic recipe with egg yolk stirred in and beaten egg white folded in.

Frozen Egg Nog

Frozen Egg Nog

Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 1 hour
Review: Magic Short-cut Recipes for the Automatic Refrigerator (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

  • 2 egg yolks
  • 2 egg whites
  • ⅔ cup sweetened condensed milk
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • a few grains of salt
  • ½ cup whipping cream

Steps

  1. Beat the egg yolks.
  2. Beat in the condensed milk and vanilla.
  3. Chill in refrigerator.
  4. Add the salt to the egg whites and beat to stiff peaks.
  5. Fold into chilled milk mixture.
  6. Whip cream to foamy, fluffy thickness.
  7. Fold into chilled milk mixture.
  8. Pour into freezing bowl and freeze for two to four hours, until firm.

That’s rich. The egg yolk takes the place of the water in the basic recipe. The egg white makes it fluffier. I suspect that if you added the traditional egg nog flavorings of nutmeg and brandy, rum, or bourbon, it would be even better. I might try that next Christmas.

But this is not a post about condensed milk, evaporated milk, or any other strange ingredient. This is a post about ice cream. The only thing you really need to make ice cream is cream… and ice. That’s the premise of Plombir Slivochnyi from the Foods of the World Russian Cooking volume. This Russian ice cream recipe breaks all of the rules but the requirement of cream. It doesn’t use a syrup. It doesn’t use eggs, neither as a custard from the yolk nor as a meringue from the white. It is literally cream, whipped and frozen with flavorings.

Russian ice cream is excellent, and comes in many flavors. It has not yet been “improved” with additions of air, gelatin and unpronounceable chemicals; it is still a blend of pure cream, pure eggs and pure nostalgia.

At least as far as this recipe goes, it hasn’t even been “improved” with pure eggs. There is sugar for sweetness, and vanilla. There are almonds and glazed chopped fruits for texture. The fruit adds the sort of chewiness that ice cream needs, and usually receives from syrup or custard.

Russian Ice Cream

Plombir Slivochnyi (Russian Ice Cream)

Servings: 8
Preparation Time: 45 minutes
Review: Russian Cooking (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp almond extract
  • 1-½ cups finely chopped glazed fruits
  • 3 cups whipping cream
  • ½ cup powdered sugar
  • ½ cup blanched, toasted, ground almonds

Steps

  1. Sprinkle the glazed fruits with the vanilla and almond extracts, and let soak for at least 15 minutes.
  2. Whip the cream until it begins to thicken.
  3. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar a tablespoon at a time.
  4. Continue to beat until firm.
  5. Fold in the glazed-fruit mixture and ground almonds.
  6. Pour into chilled freezer bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
  7. Freeze at least four hours or until firm.

So here you are. Just in time for summer, six more recipes for ice cream made in your home freezer. Is that enough? When it comes to ice cream, it is never enough. But it is a start, and that shall have to do.

In response to Ice cream from your home freezer: You can make great ice cream with whole eggs, egg yolks, and egg whites. You can even make it without eggs at all. All you need is syrup and cream—and a refrigerator with a freezer or a standalone home freezer.

  1. Ice Trilogy ->