Rocky Road Icecream

For the first time last night, I made icecream! And I can’t communicate how absolutely amazing it is.

I used the vanilla recipe and instructions from David Lebovitz on making icecream without an icecream maker. To this I added cherries and mini marshmellows.

The basic theory is to make a custard, then add this to cream and chill in an icebath. Then put it in the freezer for 45min, take it out and beat. Continue every 30min till frozen. It took 6 hours in our freezer. The reason for the beating is that water freezes before fat, so you have to break that so it freezes evenly and with lots of air.

I’m really proud to report that it worked out perfectly. Far smoother than most supermarket brands and matches the smoothness of nice icecream! It took a lot of patience to let it set. If I wasn’t hoping to photograph it and also understand how hard it would get, it would have been consumed at the stage where you add the cream to the custard. I will admit to really enjoying licking the beaters every 30 min 😉

I used a stainless steel bowl for the icebath and freezing stage. This meant that it was really easy to take out of the freezer and beat with my hand mixer. I never mixed for long and just made sure I got everything that was setting around the edges mixed through. I think the other reason for my success was the quality of the ingredients. I used double pure cream so there was no artificial thickners.

I’ve now updated the baking category of the blog to ‘in the kitchen’ as there isn’t any part of icecream making that could be called baking and I’m definately going to be doing this again and again. The next one I really want to try is the salted caramel icecream.