Amish Homemade Ice Ceam
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 my 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.
Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream
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.
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?
I’ve never tried it, but you could probably add cocoa powder to the custard and even some chopped chocolate.