SWEEEEET! I was just thinking about homemade ice cream the other day, when my husband ate the whole quart our neighbors brought over and never shared. I think he may qualify as an Ice Cream Geek, too! Now, do you have a recipe for frozen custard? I remember going with mom in Beaumont to get it, and it was the most awesome thing evah!!

Do you use the whole egg, as most recipes i’ve seen just use the yolks?

Great recipe. I made half a recipe. I do not have a ice machine, but this is what I did. I mixed the sugar with 1/8 tsp xantan gum and added that to the eggs. (I have a kitchen aid mixer, so that turned out quite fluffy. Mixed that with the hot mixture etc. Added 1/2 tsp vanilla and some cinnamon (love cinn icecream). Froze the whole mix overnight, fluffed up with the kitchenaid again, and froze again. Nicely scoopable and really yummie!

Bob: yes, I generally use the whole egg, but I’ve experimented with just using the yolks, also. From what I can tell it doesn’t make a huge difference, but I suppose if you were doing something special like using a half dozen eggs, it might be better to just use the yolks. Let me know if you find out anything more on it.

Thanks,
Russell

If I don’t add vanilla or cinnamon to the cream, half & half mixture will it taste similar to the Sweet Cream flavor from Marble Slab or Cold Stone? That is the flavor I want to learn to make because it is by far my favorite.

Thanks for this post. I wish I had found it last night. I have the Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream recipe book. I was confused looking at the sweet cream base #1 recipe because it did not have instructions for cooking the base. However, in sweet cream base recipe #2 it states it was unlike the others because it did not need to be cooked!! Anyway, I proceeded to follow the recipe w/o cooking it, and you can imagine, we are not enjoying Blueberry ice-cream today.

Thanks again, Angelica

I usually steal soup containers from a grocery store salad bar whenever I buy my ice cream making ingredients. They’re the same as ice cream containers so long as u don’t mind the grocery store designs

I made the mix, heated on medium-low heat for 25 minutes, it got up to 175 F. I cooled the mix in an ice bath for an hour inside the fridge and when in poured it into my mixer it smelled like egg, almost like rotten eggs. The eggs are fresh from whole foods today, I used fresh cream and fresh milk, all bought today. Is that scent normal?

Update, best texture i’ve ever seen and felt in an ice cream but the smell of rotten eggs was over powered by the sour taste of the ice cream. I don’t know what went wrong, I even used a thermometer.

Hi Jessica,

Wow, that’s really strange, I haven’t heard of that before. I can only think of two reasons why that could happen… Either there was some kind of strange smell in your fridge that got into your mix, or the eggs were bad. And if you don’t smell anything strange in your fridge, or you had the mix covered, then I’d have to go with the bad egg theory. If you figure it out, let us know. Good luck!

Russell

Russell, I wish I knew. I checked the eggs even though I bought them on July 4th and they’re good. I am very unsure but since I wonder if I overcooked them or did something funny with them, I’m buying pasteurized eggs today. They sell them locally and they’re about 50¢ more than regular eggs. i think I can handle the cost. I won’t have to cook them and I won’t worry about any bacteria. I’ll be serving the ice cream to a child every now and then and it’s hard trying to tell her it’s only for grown ups who are healthy because of the raw eggs. A 6 year old only hears “no ice cream!” :)

As for fridge smells, I considered that until I realized, I poured the mix into a zip loc bag sitting in an ice bath. It’s the way Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream book tells you to “rapid cool” the mix. the mix was ready for the ice cream mixer in 30 minutes, but I gave it an hour to ensure it was cold enough. I also don’t see anything that could cause a scent in the fridge, but that doesn’t mean there could not be one. I’m going to try again tonight, will provide an update. I’m dying to try this once more and hopefully I see that same texture and thickness, it was amazing.

Well, I found pasteurized eggs and made the base again, it seems to have worked well. It is more airy, I used an electric mixer to whisk the eggs and such. I also don’t think it was as cold as it could have been but I had an impatient 6 year old who had to get to bed. All in all I’m happy with the results. Can’t wait to see how it freezes.

Jessica,
I’ve had that happen before. Your curdled the eggs. It’s important to let the cream mixture cool down by adding a small amount of the yolks while constantly whipping so that the eggs don’t “curdle”. When you curdle the eggs, that’s all you can smell or taste. When don’t correctly, the mixture becomes very smooth.

I found your blog looking for dairy free, gluten free ice cream. BTW, for me, eggs are not dairy. They come from poultry now cows.

Kim

Jessica, I’m agreeing with Kim. It sounds as though your eggs didn’t temper properly and therefore curdled. You may have also burned your milk which smells pretty bad (though not like rotten eggs). Just make sure to add small amounts of the hot milk mixture to the eggs while whisking. I used a ladle and put about half a ladle full into the eggs while whisking and continued adding half ladles until about half of the milk mixture was in the eggs. Then I just poured the eggs in the milk while whisking.

Thanks for the recipe! We’re having it with strawberry pie tonight for a barbeque! yum!

I also think this is just more eggy than what I’m used to. I carefully tempered the egg/ sugar mixture and used a thermometer in cooking the base. The base was perfectly smooth, but smelled very eggy.

Churned and frozen it’s still eggy, but not unpleasantly. It’s like a custard, I guess.

Can’t wait to look at more of your blog posts! Thanks!

Jessica,

I agree with Kim on the eggs being curdled and also that fact that if you had the ziplock bag sealed they heat wasn’t aloud to escape and your liquid spoiled. NEVER cover or close anything hot and put it directly in the fridge. ALWAYS keep a lid cracked open for heat and moister to escape and always give a stir or shake while cooling something off. That shaking or stirring also helps stop the inner core of the food from spoiling and cools it down faster.

If making a non-cooking ice cream… What about whipping the cream fairly stiff before mixing in the milk/egg/sugar-mixture?

I think I solved the icy problem of the second recipe. It does require cooking, which takes the “no-cook” novelty, which to me is really no big deal. Just mix up a cornstarch slurry (1 tsp each water and cornstarch), heat your cream to a simmer, add the slurry, and cook gently for five minutes to cook out the flavor of the cornstarch. Then, you can just follow the instructions from where they start. I tried this the other day, and it was creamy, rich, and smooth, and not at all icy. It was such a hit, I’m making more this afternoon!

Great recipe, thanks!

I tried using the butterfat calculator on the Ben and Jerry’s eggless base recipie – with two cups whipping cream at 36% butterfat and 2/3 cup half and half at 12% butterfat, by my caluclation there, it would be a 30% butterfat ice cream.

I’ve calculated this mix would be 75% cream and 25% half and half, by volume. What’s wrong with this picture? Thanks for any clarity.

Hi Ron,

I think the problem is that you’re not including the 3/4 cup sugar from the recipe in your calculations. Remember that the percentage butterfat is by weight, so the sugar is important since it changes the total weight of the recipe. When I enter the cream, half-and-half, and sugar into my Ice Cream Butterfat Calculator, I get 24.8%, which is a bit more reasonable.

The Base #1 recipe above with eggs comes out to 19.1%. I think the extra butterfat in the eggless recipe helps compensate for the lack of eggs.

Russell

How did you know to cook Base #1? The recipe book does not say to do so. Nor did it say to use pasterized eggs. This was the 1st ice cream recipe book I reviewed and purchased. Based on the recipe, you mix the ingredients and add to maker. Luckily, the ice cream maker had a recipe book that used eggs and every recipe required you to cook.

Hi Sam,

Yes, you’re right, the book says nothing about cooking recipes with eggs, or the risk of salmonella. I think they leave it to the reader to decide whether they’re concerned about it or not.

I’ve read that the risk is pretty low, and a lot of people don’t worry about it. But since pasteurized eggs are easy for me to find, it’s just as easy for me to use them and not have to worry about someone getting sick eating my ice cream — and I can skip the cooking part completely.

I guess you’ll have to decide for yourself which way you want to go on it.

Thanks,
Russell

Russell,

Thank you for such quick feedback. I think I will use the pasterized eggs next time. However, does using the raw egg leave a egg taste to the ice cream?

Sam,

I haven’t noticed any difference in taste or consistency either way. The only difference I’ve found is the strong “cooked milk” taste from cooking the recipe, which people seem to love or hate. It’s sure a lot easier not having to cook it though.

Russell

Hi,
regarding the issue of eggy smelling or eggy tasting ice cream custard, you may be interested to know that beaten whole egg coagulates at about 155 F ( 68 C) although the addition of sugar (in this case) would raise the coagulation temperature to a certain extent.
The English chef Heston Blumenthal advised that an ice cream custard based on egg yolks be heated up to only 149 F ( 65 C) to avoid the eggy taste issue. Egg yolks coagulate at about 149 F – 158 F ( 65 C – 70 C) and egg whites coagulate at about 140 F – 158 F ( 60 C – 65 C)
If you are worried about food safety you could try to adjust the heat and hold the temperature of the custard at 149 F (65 C) for a minute or so.
Apparently the most heat resistant strain of salmonella is significantly destroyed when exposed to a temperature of 130 F ( 55 C ) for 2.5 minutes.

I had the same eggy smelling problem. I actually made my base with vanilla soy and also almond milk (for lactose intolerance). I’m wondering though if this is even safe to eat. Thoughts?

The uncooked recipe was fantastic. Thanks a bunch!

My favorite part of Ben’s book (and there are a LOT of parts I like) is when he’s talking about what to do with all of those extra egg whites:

“I store them, covered in the refrigerator. About 30 days later, I throw them away.”

CLASSIC!

Kevin,
I love that part! My mom got me the book about 15 years ago, and I pored over it, memorizing the anecdotes. That’s categorically the best one and I’m always quoting it when I make a french custard and friends are hovering nearby. Classic.

What if I used a stabilizer (my brother has Cremodan 30) to recipe #2 — would that keep the ice crystals at bay?

I recently acquired a cream separator so we can start making/selling goat cream, butter, and possibly ice cream.

The cream consistancy adjustment seems to have no effect and my cream always comes out very rich. It has the consistancy of refrigerated heavy whipping cream but it’s around body temp. When I refrigerate it it’s so heavy you can turn the jar upside down and nothing happens.. it’s solid.

I need to get it tested so I can mix skim back in to get it to the proper “heavy” whipping cream ratio.

I’m going to make some ice cream tonight anyway and just try to guesstimate it :)

I work for a small dairy and I’m trying to decide on a recipe for our ice cream . We are using our own milk cow or goat and I’m not sure if I should use a stabelize like Carrageenan or Guar Gum or eggs. It will be mixed and pastuerized together chilled then put in a batch freezer.

This recipe is amazing! I put bits of chocolate chip cookie dough in the ice cream and it tasted great! Thanks, I will definetly be making this ice cream again :)

I made this recipe for the 4th of July. I modified as follows: I used 6 PASTEURIZED egg yolks and doubled all of the other ingredients, but did NOT cook the mixture. I’m one of those people who doesn’t like the cooked milk taste. When I was a kid we *gasp* used raw eggs in our homemade ice cream all the time, but I felt better about using pasteurized. To me, that’s the way homemade ice cream is supposed to taste. It was well worth the effort! With my double batch I did half vanilla (with a real vanilla bean and some pure vanilla extract) and the other half with chocolate malt ovaltine and some malted milk powder. I did end up adding some additional whole milk to the chocolate version because it was so sweet from the malt powder. I also drizzled in some vegetable glycerine to both to help keep the ice cream scoopable after being in the freezer overnight, and it worked like a charm. The vanilla is less hard than the chocolate because the butterfat content is higher due to having more cream, but both are scoopable and delicious. I’m going to make some homemade ice cream sandwiches for my kids with it! Yum!

hello,
Has anybody used duck eggs or goose eggs when making this. Reading about the different type of eggs I just think the ice cream will taste better. Let me know ….there is an ostrich farm near by and I think i am going to try it lol.

After having a complete disaster with a recipe that used eight egg yolks, a friend pointed me in the direction of Ben and Gerry,s sweet cream recipe. I have just made the custard and this time I used the thermometer . Wow, absolutely perfect and just the flavour I was looking for, I hate that overly eggy taste you get sometimes. It is very sweet but I know that freezing will “lose” that too sweet taste. Can,t wait to. Churn it tomorrow. I have bought an ice cream attachment for my KA mixer and it will be my first attempt , so fingers crossed. Will report back.xxx

OK, doubled the mixture exactly, used 6 whole Madagascar beans, scraping the flake, and added 3/8 xanthan gum, wonderful. I started making my own ice cream after the kids could not read the label on the side of the major store bought brands, I like that we have only 5 items in the ice cream base plus Calabaut chocolate, melted and poured in the churner at the last min. wonderful chip style.

What is vegetable glycerin? When you use pasteurized eggs, you don’t cook the base, correct? Do you then still refrigerate it before churning?
Does this recipe scale up well?

Re: Eggy Taste. The diet fed to chickens may be comprised of various ingredients that effect the flavor of the eggs; ingredients such as fish oil to add omega 3s(a good thing but may add a fishy taste especially when cooked), as well as soy and other miscellaneous items. Best eggs to use; cage free eggs from chicken that are Free Ranged-where they can eat the things chickens are supposed to eat. Visit a local farm for these eggs, but ask the farmer about the chicken feed if you are concerned about what is contained in his chicken fed.

Great recipe. Very creamy and decadent.Makes a great dessert with a fresh berry fruit sauce.

So, I learned to make ice cream in a Baking 101 course offered at a local school w/ a culinary program. I even received a Kitchen Aid ice cream maker for Christmas, but I barely used it (because it froze hard as a rock). Enter this website: OMG! I think I make ice cream every week and people constantly tell me I should open an ice cream parlor. I pull from what I learned in school, but I learned SO much more on this site. THANK YOU for such solid information. Ordering the cardboard containers fixed the “rock-hard problem.” I have now used HUNDREDS of them. I justed ordered guar gum to try to make strawberry ice cream. It was not until today when Googling and coming across the site again that I realized just how much I learned from this ONE site. I will recommend for sure!

Please be noted milky smell is very strong in sweet cream and French vanilla ice cream. Please advise me how I can remove milky smell?

I have made the no-cook, no eggs version for 10 or more years. It’s perfect. The other might be better but I’ll never know, it would be easier to go to the store and buy a pint.

You can forget about eggs by using sweetened condensed milk. You take the amount of 25% butterfat cream you want to use, then take .46 (or 46%) of that amount and add that much sweetened condensed milk.

You can get the 25% mixture by mixing heavy and light cream in equal amounts, or using 2/3 heavy cream and 1/3 “half and half.”

The 25% mixture gets reduced to a bit over 19% butterfat, when you calculate .46 of condensed milk (which itself is 8.5% butterfat.

I should have added that the sweetened condensed milk, calculated at .46 of the cream mix, yields 14% sugar in the final mixture. That’s the reason for the percentage and if the cream mix is 25% butterfat, you wind up with around 19% butterfat after combining the cream and condensed milk.

Can anyone tell me how to reduce the fat content of 14% fat ice cream mix from 14% to 10%? How much 3.5% whole milk do I add to one gallon of 14% fat ice cream mix to result in a 10% ice cream mix? Thanks.

Hi Ethan,

I think my Ice Cream Butterfat Converter can help with that!

https://www.icecreamgeek.com/?page_id=1024

If I tell it to combine 14% butterfat with 3.5% butterfat to make 10% butterfat, it gives this result:

Use:
62% of the 14% butterfat
38% of the 3.5% butterfat

So if you have one US gallon (128 oz) of 14% mix, you’d add 78 oz of 3.5% milk to get 206 oz of 10% mix.

Or if you have one Imperial gallon (160 oz) of 14% mix, you’d add 98 oz of 3.5% milk to get 258 oz of 10% mix.

I think, anyway. ;-)

Thanks!
Russell

This is a great recipe, but I’m curious. I have the Ben & Jerry’s book and the quantities of the base mix #1 match exactly, but their method is to basically whisk everything together and dump it in the ice cream maker. How did you develop the idea of making it a cooked recipe? Did you get inspiration from traditional Creme Anglaise?

Personally I much prefer cooking my eggs (less chance of salmonella) so your recipe is absolutely perfect for me :)

Hi Luke,

The only reason I mention cooking the base is because of the risk of salmonella with raw eggs, which is something the Ben & Jerry’s book doesn’t talk about. If you use pasteurized eggs you can skip the cooking if you like, although some people prefer the taste of cooked milk or prefer to thicken the base before freezing. You can find out more about pasteurized eggs in my post here:

Pasteurized Eggs in Ice Cream

Thanks!
Russell

Hi Russel,

I don’t think they sell pasteurized eggs in my country (at least I’ve never seen them in any shops) so it’s good that this one is cooked. My question, which I maybe didn’t phrase so well, was how you came up with the cooking procedure. Did you make it up yourself by trial and error or is there some other resource? I’m trying to learn as much about ice cream making as I can, as I’ve just acquired a compressor ice cream maker (to replace my decade-old pre-frozen chilled-bucket machine) and I’m trying to take my recipes to the next level. So far this is the first ever recipe I’ve ever made that incorporates eggs (for the last decade I’ve just made “Philadelphia style”).

Hi Luke,

I don’t really remember where I originally got the cooking procedure but it’s a standard one that you see in a lot of ice cream books and blog posts, and it’s actually the same as a standard custard cooking procedure. Generally they just say to heat the mixture until it “coats the back of a spoon” but being a geek, I prefer to use a thermometer and heat it according to the FDA’s official requirement for pasteurization.

Great that you got a new ice cream maker with a compressor!

Thanks,
Russell

Do you use the whole egg in the sweet cream base? Confused. Do you have a thermometer you would recommend? I’m a newbie. Thx

Hi Julie,

You can definitely use the whole egg when making ice cream. Technically, it’s the yolk that we really want, since it contains the fat, and the white is mostly water, which isn’t good in ice cream. But I’ve never noticed much difference between using the whole egg or just the yolk, so do whatever’s more convenient for you.

For measuring the temperature of the base while you’re heating it up, I’d recommend any type of “instant read digital thermometer”. There are a ton of them on Amazon, and even the cheap ones will probably do fine for this.

Thanks,
Russell

Hi Russell
First just want to thank you for a lots of information I learn today
Due to brain injury I’ve been stuck at home for almost 3 yrs being in food business for 26 yrs
I’m very interested to learn about ice cream (hopefully one day I’m feeling better) I can
Start ice cream business first I got so many things to learn about it & because of constant migraines is very difficult to learn by researching everything my self & I couldn’t use ipad more than 15 mins with out triggering my headache is tough to do things everyday but I don’t want this injury to rule my life .
That’s why if you can answer some of my questions that will be great .
Here’s are the questions
-How to pasteurize with out those commercial equipments? Is that by cooking the base ice cream ?
-what’s hot & cold process ? Which one is better ?
-is the base ice cream is better to use vanilla flavour all the time or better with out?
-can I use same base ice cream in every flavour I make ?
-what kind of emulsifier & stabilizer is good to use?
-for business use what’s the best percentage of heavy cream & milk ? ( better profit & still good products)
-Which ice cream batch freezer brand Is good out there not too expensive & low maintenance
So far I’m looking at 2 brand & trying to decide which one ? Emery Thompson CB-350 or stoelting VB-309 A telme? (Buying brand new) do you have any suggestions which one ? Or you have better recommendation?
-I can see many used stoelting telme for sale out there but I don’t see emery Thompson ?
-Do you think is safe to buy used one?
So sorry I got so many questions hope you can help me just need ideas & something for me to work on ? if not that’s ok I understand thank you.

Hi Richel,

I’ll try to answer some of your questions, but I’m afraid I don’t have any first-hand commercial experience so I’ll have to skip the questions I don’t know the answer to.

-How to pasteurize with out commercial equipment? Is that by cooking the base ice cream?

You can find the FDA’s official regulations on pasteurizing food here:
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=135.3

For my own ice cream, I cook the mix and bring it to 175 degrees F and hold it there for 25 seconds.

-what’s the hot & cold process? Which one is better? 

I believe this is related to making things like gelato from a commercial mix. I don’t have experience with that, sorry.

-in the base ice cream  is it better to use vanilla flavour all the time or is it better without?

It’s totally personal preference. Vanilla tends to amplify flavors though, so it’s useful even in recipes like chocolate because it makes it taste more chocolaty.

-can I use same base ice cream in every flavour I make?

Mostly, yes, although some flavors that have a large amount of something like chocolate might need to be adjusted to have more or less sugar. I use the same base for most recipes though. If you’re buying a commercial ice cream mix from a dairy, they often have a separate base for chocolate.

-what kind of emulsifier & stabilizer is good to use?

There are a lot of different commercial stabilizers and I don’t have experience with many of them. If you’re going to be making ice cream commercially, I’d suggest talking to the dairy where you’ll be getting your ingredients to see if they have a mix of stabilizers they use for ice cream.

Thanks,
Russell

I’m usually a consumer of information, but this recipe is so good and I’m so grateful that I felt compelled to leave a comment.

I halved the recipe, and tempered cooked the mixture, before chilling it to the requisite temp and then churning it. It was the most perfect I’ve cream I have ever had. I made hazelnut coffee flavored ice cream.

Instead of sugar, I added 2 tbsp honey. I also added 1 oz of lavazza dark roast brewed coffee, and 2 pumps of Torani hazelnut syrup. My 10 yr old who Is very particular about ice cream gave his seal of approval.

Thank you so much!!

Kintsugi,

Glad you liked the recipe. Your version sounds delicious!

Russell

i didn’t get the part about the butterfat… it’s the recipe, plus 19% of butterfat?

Hi Pedro,

No, it’s saying that 19% of the total weight of the recipe is butterfat, which comes from milk and cream. By controlling the percentage of butterfat in a recipe, you can control the taste and texture of it as well.

See this post on my site for more info: Butterfat and Ice Cream

Thanks,
Russell

Hi Russell!

I just stumbled across this recipe, but I’ve been making Melissa Clark’s ice cream recipe from NYT Cooking (https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016605-the-only-ice-cream-recipe-youll-ever-need) for about 2 years now. It’s pretty similar to a lot of other recipes I had looked at before in that they call for like a 2:1 ratio of cream to milk, and somewhere around 5-6 egg yolks. The results are okay, but the one thing that I can’t seem to avoid is this weird waxy texture that coats the back of the spoon once my ice cream is done.

However, I followed the link in your last comment to your Ice Cream Butterfat calculator, and it is amazing! I really want to get more of a texture like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which, according to one of your other posts, is closer to 10% butterfat. So plugging in the recipe I’ve been using plus my own modified versions of it I’ve tried over the years shows me that the fat percentage is too high. I’m going to try adjusting it and see if it helps.

I do have a question though — what happens if you overheat your custard base? I’ve never used a thermometer — I’ve just made a lot of pudding and custard before and always just cook it until it “coats the back of the spoon” as they say. Although sometimes I feel like there’s a wide range of when it actually does that, where how thickly it coats the back of the spoon varies. I’m curious about the negative ramifications of overcooking the base, though.