The place to start when making ice cream is with the Sweet Cream Base. It contains the basic ingredients for lots of recipes, and then you can add flavorings to make whatever you want.

A great book to start with is Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book. It’s filled with no-nonsense recipes that are easy to make, and taste fantastic. Their recipe for the Sweet Cream Base is a pretty common one, and I’ve used it enough times to have it memorized. I like recipes with eggs because I think they make a creamier, more custard-like texture, but see the second recipe below if you want to make an ice cream without eggs.

If you’re looking to duplicate your favorite super-premium ice cream, this is the one you’ll want (reprinted with permission):

Ben & Jerry’s Sweet Cream Base #1:

2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup whole milk

(makes about one quart)

The basic process:

• Mix the cream and milk together and heat over medium-low heat.
• While that’s heating, beat the heck out of the eggs in a separate bowl, until they turn lighter in color.
• Sloooooowly, add the sugar while whisking the eggs. I usually use an electric mixer in one hand and then use the other hand to pour the sugar in a little bit at a time. Slower is better. When it’s all in there, mix it a minute or so more. The sugar should be completely incorporated into the eggs.
• When the cream/milk mix reaches about 140 degrees F (60 C), remove it from the heat. Gradually stir small amounts of the cream/milk mix into the egg/sugar mix until about a third of the cream and milk have been added. (This is called “tempering”, and prevents the eggs from being scrambled in the high heat.) Then pour in the rest of the cream and milk and mix it all together.
• The next step is to continue heating the whole mix to kill anything that shouldn’t be in there, especially salmonella, which is a nasty bacteria that can come from raw eggs and make people pretty sick. Heating the mix also gives the ice cream a “cooked” flavor, like the taste of warm milk. Heat the mix over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until it reaches the magic temperature. I’ve found web pages where the CDC has said on different occasions that the magic temperature is either 160, 165, 170, or 175 degrees F (70-80 C).  According to the FDA, a pasteurized ice cream mix has to be heated to 155 degrees F (68 C) for 30 minutes or to 175 degrees F (79 C) for 25 seconds.
• Pour the mix into a container and let it cool for a bit before adding extracts that might evaporate in the hot mix. You can speed up this cooling step by putting the mix into a metal bowl that’s inside another metal bowl containing ice water. Add a teaspoon of good vanilla extract or ground cinnamon at this point to make those easy flavors.
• Chill the mix (either covered in the fridge, or using the double-bowl and ice method) until it’s below 40 degrees F (5 C). This is important, because the mix needs to be chilled before it’s run through the machine, so it freezes faster. The faster the mix freezes, the smaller the ice crystals will be, and the smoother the texture.
• If you have a machine with a built-in freezer, turn it on and let it get good and cold. Turn on the motor so the dasher starts spinning, and then pour in the mix.
• It’ll take about 30 minutes, more or less, to churn. You’ll probably be able to hear the motor slowing down when it gets close, and you should probably stop it before it really starts having trouble, just so you don’t damage it. It’ll come out like stiff soft-serve ice cream.
• Speed counts now. You need to get all the ice cream out of the machine, into containers, and into the freezer, as quickly as possible. After a few hours in the freezer, the ice cream will harden and be like what you buy in the store. Smaller, pre-chilled containers allow the ice cream to freeze faster, which is what you want to keep it from getting icy. The Ziploc pint-sized containers with screw-top lids hold up well in the freezer. The thinner, more flexible plastic containers tend to crack after being used a couple of times. I’m still trying to find a good source for the paper pint containers like Ben & Jerry’s comes in. If you’ve found a good way to buy them in units less than a gazillion, let me know. Update: I found some, here!
• Of course, you could also just eat it right out of the machine. Especially if it’s the first batch you’ve ever made. ;-)

A note about eggs…

If the whole idea of cooking the mix just seems like too much work, you might see if you can find pasteurized eggs where you live. You’ll be able to skip all the heating parts completely, and go straight to the ice cream machine. Take a look at my post about pasteurized eggs for more info.

Or you can try Ben & Jerry’s second base recipe, which doesn’t use eggs, and therefore doesn’t require cooking.  They say it’s a super-premium recipe with 25% butterfat but needs to be eaten right away since it tends to turn icy in the freezer.

Ben & Jerry’s Sweet Cream Base #2

2 cups heavy whipping cream
3/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup half-and-half

(makes about one quart)

Whisk the cream while slowly adding the sugar a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about one minute more. Then pour in the milk and whisk to blend.

So go make a batch and report back!

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