Have You Tried No Churn Ice Cream?

Let me be the first to confess. Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of no churn ice cream, let alone, made it or tasted it. I heard about it from a 10 year old on Kids Baking Championship on Food Network! I didn’t feel that bad after both Duff Goldman and Valeri Bertinelli both said they hadn’t heard of it either. Out of the mouth of babes, right?

It seemed so crazy to me that three simple ingredients (heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk and vanilla) could be turned into ice cream in minutes. The real question was, did it taste good? Duff and Valeri thought so! (Yes, I’m a Food Network junkie!) So into the kitchen I went.

I started very simply with no churn vanilla ice cream. I whipped up the cream and vanilla, folded in the milk and froze it over night. Then came the big test, taste. I really couldn’t wait. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. It was so creamy and absolutely delicious. That got all my creative juices flowing so I started playing with different flavors of ice cream and different mix ins and toppings.

First up, my favorite ice cream flavor, pistachio. To make no churn pistachio ice cream, I took the same base ingredients in the vanilla ice cream recipe and added 1/2 teaspoon of pistachio paste and a handful of toasted pistachios. This was really, really good. No churn ice cream is much creamier than most ice creams I’ve tasted and I loved the texture the pistachios added to the mix. Needless to say, I have now started to “play” with flavor possibilities. So far, I’ve tried mixing flavorings and ingredients into the basic vanilla ice cream recipe above.  Here is a starter list for you to try:

• Mint chocolate chip (I added chopped Andes candies)
• Strawberry (I added ½ teaspoon of strawberry extract and ½ cup of chopped strawberries)
• Chocolate Fudge swirl (I swirled in some chocolate syrup)
• Halvah No Churn Ice Cream (I added pieces of the halva into the base recipe…. OMG, this was good!) You can buy halvah at the grocery store but try my basic halva recipe to experience the real thing!

Next on my list, pralines and cream! I’m thinking I can add Carmel swirls and candied pecans to the vanilla base and get pretty close. I’ll let you know how that turns out and if it is a winner, look for the recipe.This was the easiest and most fun way to “play with my food”. This would be such a great way to entertain a bunch of kids during a sleep over. They could create their masterpiece, pop it in the freezer and wake up to ice cream for breakfast! Hey, I’m the cool Aunt and in my house, fun rules! LOL   I can think of several girlfriends who would think this was pretty cool too. I’m not sure they’d want ice cream for breakfast BUT it would make a great take away gift the next day.

When you consider that you don’t need any special equipment and only three ingredients for a basic vanilla ice cream, why wouldn’t you try his method?  Of course, I have an ice cream maker and of course, I make ice cream in the traditional way too, I’m just saying, for a fast and easy ice cream, no churn is a winner.

Looking for other frozen dessert ideas?  Don’t miss these recipes:

Almond Milk Pistachio Ice Cream

Blender Berry Sorbet

Healthy Pineapple Whip

Ice Cream Bon Bons

Nutella Peanut Butter Ice Cream

And if you love ice cream as much as I do, you might want to consider entertaining with an entire ice cream bar!  See my Setting up an Ice Cream Sundae Station for more ideas.  Enjoy.

NOTES: you can purchase pistachio paste in a lot of supermarkets but pistachio extract or flavoring would work and I’ve made pistachio ice cream with a mix of almond extract and vanilla extract (1 tsp. vanilla and ½ tsp. of almond extract) with the pistachios mixed in and have gotten great results. See The Best Pistachio Ice Cream recipe for more.