Maybe the dairy is clouding my brain, but I don’t think I’ll ever buy ice cream from the grocery store again.
It is so easy and so gratifying to make ice cream from scratch – I think it’s one of the great secret pleasures of life. And you don’t need an ice cream maker.
Last year was my first attempt at making ice cream, and it turned out wonderfully! It spawned the great realization that homemade ice cream means that the sky is the limits in terms of flavour combinations; for instance, you can add booze to your ice cream, which you would never find at the supermarket (at least not real booze, maybe booze flavour). That first recipe was pretty classic: cream, sugar, egg yolks, a vanilla bean, lots of stirring and time.
However, version 2.0 offers an even easier way to make ice cream – moreover, it doesn’t include egg yolks, so it takes less time, and you don’t end up with a bunch of egg whites you have to creatively deal with.
I was inspired to make a cardamom-flavoured batch, as there is a local restaurant that pairs cardamom ice cream with a chocolate torte on their menu, and it is divine.
Homemade cardamom ice cream 2.0
300 ml whipping (35%) cream
half of a 400 g can of sweetened condensed milk
10 green cardamom pods
Gently heat the cream in a small saucepan. Just before it starts to boil, take it off the heat and add the cardamom pods. Cover, and let it steep for 30 minutes. Strain the cardamom out and stir in the condensed milk. Put the ice cream mix into a container you would like to freeze the ice cream in, cover, and place it in the fridge for 8-24 hours to get it as cold as possible before putting in the freezer. Then, and this is crucial, put it in the freezer. I didn’t bother stirring the ice cream during the freezing process, and it turned out smooth and silky.
This base recipe of cream and condensed milk is an excellent starting point for all sorts of flavours: I think next I’ll try adding a big spoonful of Nutella to make a chocolate-hazelnut version – hubba bubba!
The cardamom ice cream paired wonderfully with an espresso, a new library book, and a lazy afternoon.