Amish Homemade Ice Cream Recipe

Amish Homemade Ice Cream

Have you ever tried a bowl of soft-serve Amish homemade ice cream? It's so creamy and delightful!

And honestly, is there any treat quite as well-loved as ice cream? I'm not sure if there is. Because 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 also LOVE it!

Ice cream comes in so many delicious flavors! And I sure love a bowl or cone of ice cream on any day of the week. Plus it also goes great with cake, pie (especially Dutch apple pie), brownies, etc. It's a wonderful and refreshing dessert!

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.

Amish Ice cream

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.

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.

And those were pleasant evenings, with the family all gathered around enjoying bowls full of homemade vanilla ice cream.

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Flavored Homemade Ice Cream

The good news is that 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.

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.

If you try this Amish ice cream recipe and enjoy it, leave me a comment below. And let me know what kind of ice cream you made.

And you might also enjoy homemade cornstarch pudding.