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Ice cream machines are great if you are planning on churning out litres and litres of homemade ice cream on a regular basis. But if you love the texture and flavour of your own homemade ice cream occasionally, it is difficult to justify not only the expense, but also the valuable kitchen space that an appliance occupies.
While we don’t have a specific date or person for the invention of ice cream, it is thought that the delicious dessert goes back to as early as the second century BC. Alexander the Great enjoyed eating snow flavoured with honey and nectar, while Roman Emperor Nero used to send a runner to the Alps for snow which was flavoured with various ingredients.
The first hand-cranked ice cream machines appeared in the late 19th century, but before that, all ice cream was made by hand. It is easy and fun to make ice cream at home without a machine, if you have a freezer, you have all you need. Here’s how. All recipes serve six to eight.
The freeze-stir method
Photo by Dovile Ramoskaite on Unsplash
Ingredients
1l/34 oz heavy cream
1 can sweetened condensed milk
Flavourings of choice
Method
First take a deep loaf tin or cake tray and pop it in the freezer for an hour. Whisk the heavy cream until stiff peaks appear. Fold in the can of condensed milk, carefully transfer to the cold loaf tin and place in the freezer. After 30 minutes, remove from the freezer and stir vigorously. Add the flavourings or fruit at this stage. Repeat the process every 30 minutes for at least 3 hours until the ice-cream is frozen.
Blender method
Ingredients
1l/34 oz heavy cream
I can sweetened condensed milk
Flavourings of choice
Method
Prepare the ice cream mix as above and then place in a freezer-proof Ziploc bag. Place the bag on an empty shelf in your freezer, lying it flat. After about an hour and a half, when the mixture is frozen solid, but not hard, remove from the freezer and break it into chunks. Place the chunks in a blender or food processer and wiz until creamy. Add your fruit or flavourings and wiz again. Transfer the mixture back to the Ziploc bag and freeze for another hour and a half. Check your ice-cream regularly, you may need to repeat the process, but once is usually enough.
Banana nice-cream method
iStock
Ingredients
5 ripe bananas
Honey/sugar to taste
Flavourings/fruit
Method
Not only is this a great way to use up ripe bananas, but it is also suitable for the lactose intolerant or people who avoid dairy. Simply take your bananas and wiz in a blender until smooth. Add the honey or sugar and blend further. Place in the freezer and leave for an hour. Remove from the freezer and mix vigorously, place in the freezer and repeat the process until you have thick nice-cream.
The freezer bag salt method
Ingredients
1l/34 oz heavy cream
I can sweetened condensed milk
Flavourings of choice
500g/17.6 oz salt
Method
This is a way to reduce the time needed so you can make homemade ice cream quickly. For this method you will need two freezer-proof Ziploc bags. Prepare the ice cream mix as above and place in one of the Ziploc bags, squeezing out as much air as possible before you seal. Place the bag inside a bigger Ziploc bag and fill with ice and the salt. The salt lowers the temperature of ice and makes the freezing process a lot quicker. Place in the freezer and every 20 minutes, remove the inner Ziploc bag and squeeze to disrupt the mixture and place in the bag and the freezer again.
The liquid nitrogen method
Ingredients
1l/34 oz heavy cream
I can sweetened condensed milk
Flavourings of choice
Method
Liquid nitrogen is a useful thing to have in the kitchen for those who like to experiment with their own molecular gastronomy at home. It is especially useful to have when it comes to quickly making homemade ice cream though. Watch the video for a full explanation of how to prepare ice cream using liquid nitrogen and remember to be fully up to speed with all the health and safety aspects of using liquid nitrogen before you attempt it.
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