After many, many ice cream posts I’ve decided to take a step back and assess what I have learned. Firstly I have learned that while there is a formula for your more traditional ice creams, ice cream can also be made using just fruit and cream, or infusing milk and cream with any essence or rind before freezing and churning and just about anything that you are willing to try. I have also found that there is absolutely no shame in using your churn *whispers* for something that comes out of a box like that delicious chocolate/caramel or vanilla Velvet ready made dessert.

In actual fact, you can toss out the whole idea of even making the custard from scratch and use ready made custard like Ultramel. With a little guts you will find many of your experiments will work and if it doesn’t, it can always be reconstituted into something else… “milkshake anyone…?”

Here is a formula for those who find comfort in structure on how to make most egg custard based ice creams:

1 large egg yolk for each cup of milk/cream
2-4 cups of cream/milk (ensure at least a 50/50 mix of milk and cream if you want a rich, creamy ice cream)
125ml castor sugar (or less if you are having the mixture or if you are melting chocolate into it)

Beat eggs and sugar together before adding about 125ml of the heated milk and whisking furiously. Add this to the rest of the heated milk in a large pot and stir until it comes to a boil and starts to thicken. If you are adding a slab of chocolate into the mix, remove pot from heat and place 100g of mint/milk/white/dark chocolate and stir until melted. Allow to cool overnight in the fridge before adding anything else you want chocolate chips, cranberries, fruit etc while you are churning. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, freeze your custard for an hour before whisking it with a fork every hour. Once it is almost as smooth as you would like it add your chocolate, fruit etc before allowing to freeze for a final 2 hours.

For my Choc-Mint chip ice cream I used:
750ml cream
250ml milk
4 large egg yolks
60ml sugar
100g mint chocolate

I used the method above and allowed to chill overnight in the fridge. I then poured this into my ice cream churn and added a further 100g mint chocolate that I had chopped up while the machine was going. I transferred this to a freezer safe container and allowed it to freeze overnight.