Amish Homemade Ice Cream
Have you ever tried a bowl of soft-serve Amish homemade ice cream? This custard-based ice cream freezes into a delightfully smooth and creamy texture. It's the best homemade ice cream ever!!
And honestly, is there any treat quite as well-loved as ice cream? I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't like ice cream, and most of us not only like it, but we LOVE it!
Seriously, there are so many yummy flavors to choose from! Whether it's in a bowl or on a cone, ice cream is a treat any day of the week. Plus, it pairs perfectly with cake, pie (especially Dutch apple pie), brownies, and more. It's just the best dessert for hot summer days!
Ingredients
- Milk forms the base of the ice cream. It provides liquid for consistency and contributes to the creamy texture.
- Sugar sweetens the ice cream and helps lower the freezing point, which prevents the formation of large ice crystals and keeps the ice cream smooth and creamy.
- Eggs help to blend the fats and liquids. They also add richness and contribute to the smooth texture.
- Salt enhances the flavors.
- Gelatin helps to stabilize the ice cream and prevent it from becoming too icy by binding water molecules and creating a smoother texture.
- Heavy whipping cream adds richness and creaminess. The high-fat content helps create a smooth and luxurious texture.
- Vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste provides flavor, adding a classic and aromatic taste.
Amish Ice Cream With a Custard Base
This is a homemade vanilla ice cream with eggs recipe, so it's technically homemade frozen custard. The custard base needs to be cooked, therefore you'll need to plan ahead to allow the mixture time to chill.
Typically, I cook the custard base the day before I want to make homemade ice cream, as this allows time for it to be well-chilled. Then I add the cream and vanilla just before placing the mix into the ice cream maker bucket.
If you didn't plan ahead and want to be able to freeze your ice cream within an hour, set the pan of custard base into a bowl of ice water to chill it quickly.
Your ingredients need to be cold for the ice cream to turn out. And it's also helpful to have the bucket and paddle chilled before starting the process of churning.
Items Needed to Make This 4 Qt. Homemade Ice Cream Recipe
This Amish ice cream recipe begins with about 2 quarts of homemade ice cream base. But after churning, it yields almost 4 qt. of ice cream (my 4 qt. bucket gets full if I add fruit, etc.).
You will need an ice cream maker to churn the ice cream. I use an electric Oster 4 qt. bucket ice cream maker, and I've been happy with it so far.
You will also need ice cream salt/rock salt to add to the ice when freezing the ice cream. And follow the instructions with your ice cream maker to churn the ice cream.
When finished churning, you will have a soft-serve ice cream (which I love), but if you prefer firmer ice cream, go ahead and put it in the freezer for an hour before serving.
It gets pretty hard when frozen for a long time. So you may want to remove it from the freezer for a while before serving, to allow time for it to soften a bit.
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Flavored Homemade Ice Cream
This basic vanilla ice cream recipe can easily be turned into whatever flavor of ice cream you want.
You can make traditional vanilla-flavored ice cream and let everyone top their own with ice cream toppings, or add vanilla beans for a stronger vanilla flavor.
And you can also easily add other ingredients to this old-fashioned vanilla ice cream.
Last week I added two cups of frozen red raspberries to our homemade Amish ice cream for a delicious raspberry-flavored ice cream. Everyone approved!
Just before churning, add any kind of fresh or frozen fruit that you desire, although I recommend that you cut the fruit into small pieces.
You could add butter pecan syrup and chopped pecans, mint syrup and mini chocolate chips, crushed Oreo or chocolate chip cookies, crushed candy bars, mini M&M's, etc. Have fun and create any kind of ice cream you prefer.
Or serve this homemade vanilla ice cream with my moist chocolate cake recipe or delicious Amish pecan pie.
Old-fashioned Hand Churned Ice Cream
I have good memories as an Amish kid, of making homemade ice cream with an ice cream maker. For some reason, it was quite exciting. And we couldn't wait to lick the ice cream off the paddle.
But typically, we only made ice cream in the wintertime when it snowed. I guess we probably never had enough ice to use, so we made ice cream using snow to freeze it.
We had one of those old-fashioned hand-crank ice cream makers, and it took some muscle power and dedication to get a gallon of ice cream churned.
But thankfully, I had seven brothers. They all took turns cranking that handle, and the ice cream got made in record time.
Those were pleasant evenings, with the family all gathered around enjoying bowls full of homemade vanilla ice cream.
Fond Memories of Stopping for Ice Cream Cones
Growing up as an Amish kid, we didn't get to eat ice cream very often. There were twelve of us in our family, so you can imagine that it took a gallon of ice cream for all of us to get a bowl. And we didn't have money to splurge on ice cream. So it was a rare treat.
One of my uncles and aunts lived about two hours from us. And once in a while, we hired a taxi driver and went to visit them, along with another uncle and cousins. Once, we stopped for ice cream on the way home and soon got into the habit of stopping every time.
We kids always looked forward to this. And every time we went somewhere in a taxi van with my uncle, we chanted the famous line, "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!"
I'll never forget those days, and how special it was to get an ice cream cone.
If you try this Amish ice cream recipe, I'd love it if you left me a comment and star rating below. Thank you! And let me know what kind of ice cream you made.
Amish Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 1/2 c. milk
- 1 - 1 1/2 c. sugar
- 3 eggs, room temperature
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1 envelope unflavored gelatin dissolved in 1/4 c. cold water
- 3 c. heavy whipping cream
- 1 - 2 Tbsp. vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
Instructions
- Pour the milk into a large saucepan and place over medium heat. Sprinkle sugar over the top. Do NOT stir! Bring to the boiling point. (The milk will begin to rise as it starts to boil, so keep your eye on it.)3 1/2 c. milk, 1 - 1 1/2 c. sugar
- Beat the eggs and add the salt. Add about a cup of hot milk to the well-beaten eggs to temper. While whisking, slowly add the egg mixture to the hot milk. Whisk and cook until it comes to a light boil. Remove from the heat.3 eggs, room temperature, 1/4 tsp. salt
- Add unflavored gelatin to cold water. Stir to dissolve and let it rest for a few minutes. Then whisk it into the hot egg/milk mixture.1 envelope unflavored gelatin dissolved in 1/4 c. cold water
- Chill. It will be fairly thick, whisk until smooth.
- Add the heavy cream and vanilla to the well-chilled custard. Whisk to combine.3 c. heavy whipping cream, 1 - 2 Tbsp. vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
- Pour into an ice cream freezer and freeze according to the instructions for your machine. It takes my machine takes approx. 40 minutes.
Barry
Trying my first batch, is it just me or does it have quite a bit of a whip cream taste?
I may back down some of the whip cream quantity next batch.
Thanks
Anna
Hmmm...Ice cream typically has a lot of heavy cream in it. I've tried numerous recipes over the years and had some where the cream was definitely heavy on the mouth. But I didn't think this one was too heavy with cream. Not sure if it will set up as well if you cut back too much?
Gwen Goodman
This was an awesome recipe. It worked just as you said. Everyone loved it. It set up perfectly.
How would I make this into chocolate ice cream?
Anna
I've never tried it, but you could probably add cocoa powder to the custard and even some chopped chocolate.