No-Churn Ice Cream & Sorbet - The Recipe
Easy and accessible ice cream recipes that everyone can do at home - no need for big, fancy machines! Perfect for these heatwave months..
It’s getting hot outside and lots of countries are having heat waves.. what’s the one thing that people want? Ice cream. Nothing beats an ice cold, refreshing ice cream on a hot summer’s days. What tops that? Homemade ice cream, sitting just a few steps away from you, in your freezer, ready to eat.
Now, ice cream can be made it a few different ways. Most notably, you make a custard base from scratch, mix in your flavours and then tip this into an ice cream churner for 30 minutes until it is smooth and set. This is beautiful, and the best way to make it. However, ice cream machines are both expensive and bulky. They are not always practical and sometimes you just want to make ice cream without the hassle and expense. This is where no-churn ice cream comes into play. Through using a few key ingredients, we can make an ice cream - simply using a blender, to mix all of our ingredients, then freezing in a bread tin or Tupperware. It really is as simple as that.
Note: Don’t get me wrong, I love ice cream made the traditional way, and will definitely be showing you some classic recipes for these soon too, however sometimes a quick and accessible version just makes sense, and really hits different!
Today we’ll be covering 3 flavours: strawberry, pistachio and chocolate. There is a bonus, easy-to-do, sorbet recipe at the very end too. The flavours are limitless…
How do we great tasting ice cream, without churning?
If we were to simply freeze some cream that has been blitzed with berries, you would end up with a block of crystallised creamy-berry ice. Sounds kind of nice, I can’t lie.. a creamy berry lolly pop.. but this just isn’t ice cream and wouldn’t have the satisfaction and texture of eating one either.
To make this a no churn recipe, there are two important things to remember:
Sweetened condensed milk - the high sugar and fat content in this prevents large ice crystals from forming when we freeze it. This helps keep it smooth and creamy.
Whipping the cream - instead of using the cream as is, we whip this to bring some air and lightness into the ice cream. With churning, they aerate the machine using a special paddle. By whipping our cream , we can somewhat mimic that to get a light and airy equivalent.
SO, how do we make them? Let’s get stuck in to the recipes below…