20 Delicious Ice Cream Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the most delicious ice cream? ›

When it comes to great ice cream, cold temperatures and speed are your friends: the faster you bring your base from liquid to solid, the creamier it'll be. In a 2-quart unit, a typical batch of ice cream will take between 18 and 25 minutes to churn.

Serve your ice cream with fun mix-ins for added flavor and crunch. Using interesting mix-ins and toppings is an easy way to jazz up store-bought ice cream. "I love adding diced mango or mango purée to vanilla or coconut ice cream," said Shurilla.

A big reason why ice cream tastes so good is because of its high fat content. Unless it is labeled as light, low-fat or non-fat, ice cream must contain at least 10% fat, and this fat must come from milk.

YouGov asked 1,000 U.S. adults about their favorite ice cream flavor, and many Americans ranked vanilla and chocolate at the top. Closely following America's most popular flavors were strawberry, cookies and cream, and chocolate chip.

Who We Are. In 1866, during the wake of the American Civil War, William A. Breyer of Philadelphia hand-cranked his first gallon of ice cream using some of the same ingredients we use today—rich cream, pure cane sugar and nuts.

After all, it's essentially composed of three basic ingredients: milk, cream, and sugar. How complex can the mixing of three ingredients really be? As it turns out, the answer is: very! Simply mixing the ingredients together, then freezing them, isn't enough to make a good ice cream.

Most home ice cream recipes call for simple table sugar, which is chemically known as sucrose. But in pro kitchens you have more options. Liquid sugars like invert sugar, corn syrup, honey, and glucose syrup all add body, creaminess, and stability to ice cream, and a little goes a long way.

Use plenty of fat - A good ice cream base should contain ample fat, usually from dairy like cream, whole milk, or egg yolks. More fat means a smoother texture. Cook the base - Heating the ice cream base deactivates enzymes that can make ice cream icy. Bring the base to 170-180°F.

Aside from better ingredients, the amount of churning that is done determines the quality of the ice cream. As ice cream is churned air is incorporated and it increases in volume. This increase is called overrun. Cheap ice cream can be as much as 100% overrun, meaning half of its volume is air.

Why is my homemade ice cream so creamy? ›

During churning, the dasher (or blade) of the machine scrapes tiny ice crystals off the walls of the freezer (or canister/bowl). Those ice crystals—interspersed with air—make up the body of your ice cream, which means the faster the ice cream freezes, the smaller the crystals and creamier the product.

YouGov asked 1,000 U.S. adults about their favorite ice cream flavor, and many Americans ranked vanilla and chocolate at the top. Closely following America's most popular flavors were strawberry, cookies and cream, and chocolate chip.

If your ice cream tastes greasy and leaves an unpleasantly cloying film in your mouth, then the butterfat content is probably too high. Try using less cream and more milk. And check the butterfat content using my ice cream calculator.

Yes, actually, there are two magic ingredients: Guar gum and Xanthan gum. Guar gum is a thickener, but in small quantities can also prevent the growth of ice crystals which would cause the ice cream to harden into icicles. Xanthan gum is a stabilizer which helps keep air (called overrun) in the mixture.

Ice cream brands in the U.S.

However, the distance between branded offers and private-label products is much larger. Private-label products sell 410 million units annually, which is over double Ben & Jerry's 182 million units sold. Ben & Jerry's is number one in popularity among consumers.

Birthday Cake/Cake Batter, 2% Birthday cake ice cream is an ice cream made with birthday cake batter and flavorings, including sprinkles. However, it comes in as the joint least favorite flavor for Americans, with only 2 percent choosing it as their top flavor.

Kids love classic flavors like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Innova notes that fruit flavors for kids are beginning to diversify. Red apple, peach, pineapple, and red raspberry made it into the top 20 flavors and niches like pear, blackcurrant, and passion fruit show strong growth.