Guide
Storing, scooping and serving
You have made something better than you can buy. Here is how to keep it that way until it is eaten, and how to get it into a bowl without a wrestling match.
The short answer
Freeze it in a shallow, lidded container with parchment pressed onto the surface, at the back of the freezer. Eat it within a week or two. Take it out five to ten minutes before serving, and dip the scoop in warm water between scoops.
Storing a fresh batch
- Shallow and wide beats deep and narrow. A shallow tub freezes through quickly and evenly; a deep one can take hours in the middle, which is where iciness starts.
- Press parchment or greaseproof paper onto the surface before you put the lid on. This is the single best defence against ice crystals and freezer smells.
- Chill the tub first if you can. Warm plastic melts the outside of the batch, which then refreezes coarse.
- Back of the freezer, not the door. The door is the warmest, most temperature-swung place there is.
- Label it. Two weeks on, a tub of pale ice cream could be anything.
How long it actually keeps
Homemade ice cream is safe for months but stops being a pleasure long before that. It has none of the stabilisers that let commercial tubs sit around, so the texture is what expires, not the ice cream.
As a rough guide: custard bases are at their best for one to two weeks, no-egg bases for three or four days, no-churn for about a week, and sorbet for a few days before it starts to feel grainy.
If frost has formed on the surface, it has thawed and refrozen at some point. Still edible, no longer excellent.
Scooping without a fight
- Take it out 5 to 10 minutes early. Homemade ice cream is firmer than shop-bought and needs the head start.
- Dip the scoop in warm water between scoops and shake off the drips. Warm metal glides; dry cold metal drags.
- Pull, don’t dig. Draw the scoop across the surface in a curve to roll a ball, rather than driving it downwards.
- A sturdy scoop earns its keep, but a large spoon dipped in hot water does the same job.
- Warm bowls ruin everything. Chill the bowls for fifteen minutes if you have the space.
Serving
Ice cream tastes of most when it is not painfully cold: a few minutes out of the freezer lets the aromas come back. This is why gelato, served warmer, tastes so intense.
Contrast is what makes a bowl memorable: something warm (sauce), something crunchy (nuts, honeycomb, biscuit), something sharp (fruit, a squeeze of lemon). Two of the three is plenty.
- Serve any crunchy mix-ins on the side if the batch is more than a couple of days old.
- A pinch of flaky salt over caramel, chocolate or honeycomb ice cream is never wrong.
- Warm the sauce, not the ice cream.
Taking it to someone’s house
- Pack the tub in an insulated bag with an ice pack; it will hold for a short journey.
- Newspaper or a folded tea towel around the tub works surprisingly well in a pinch.
- Freeze the tub extra hard beforehand, and take it out of the freezer last, after your coat is on.
- If it has softened on the way, put it straight in the host’s freezer for half an hour rather than refreezing it hard overnight.
- A pint of homemade ice cream with a jar of sauce taped to the lid is a better present than a bottle of wine.
Put it into practice