The master recipe
Vanilla bean custard base
Learn this one and you can make almost any flavour on this site. It is the classic egg-yolk custard: rich, slow to melt, and smooth enough to make shop-bought vanilla taste like a rumour.
- Makes about 1 litre
- 25 min hands-on
- Chill 4 hrs or overnight
- Churn 20–30 min
- Ice cream maker needed
Ingredients
- 300 ml1¼ cups whole milk
- 400 ml1⅔ cups double cream (heavy cream)
- 150 g¾ cup caster or granulated sugar
- 5 large egg yolks
- 1 vanilla pod, split lengthways, or 2 tsp vanilla extract
- A good pinch of fine salt
Method
Freeze your machine’s bowl for a full 24 hours first, unless yours has a built-in compressor.
- Put the milk, cream, half the sugar and the salt into a saucepan. Scrape in the vanilla seeds and drop the pod in too. Warm over a medium heat until it steams and just trembles at the edges. It must not boil. Take it off the heat, cover, and leave to steep for 30 minutes.
- Whisk the egg yolks with the remaining sugar for a minute, until thickened and a shade paler.
- Warm the dairy again until steaming. Pour a ladleful into the yolks in a thin stream, whisking hard, then a second ladleful. This warms the yolks gently so they cannot scramble.
- Pour everything back into the pan. Cook over a low to medium heat, stirring constantly with a spatula and scraping the base, until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of the spatula: 77–82°C (170–180°F). A finger drawn across the spatula should leave a clean line. Never let it boil.
- Pour it straight through a sieve into a cold bowl, which catches the pod and any stray threads of cooked egg. If you are using extract rather than a pod, stir it in now, off the heat.
- Cool it quickly by sitting the bowl in iced water, then cover and chill for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.
- Churn for 20–30 minutes, until it looks like thick soft-serve and holds a ribbon on the surface.
- Scrape into a shallow tub, press a piece of parchment onto the surface, lid it, and freeze for at least 4 hours before scooping.
Worth knowing
- Chilling overnight is the easiest upgrade there is. A rested base churns faster and comes out noticeably smoother.
- A thermometer takes the fear out of step 4. Under 77°C the custard stays thin; over about 85°C it scrambles.
- Never skip the sieve. Even a perfect custard leaves a few threads behind.
- Chill the storage tub too. Warm plastic melts the outside of the batch and that part refreezes grainy.
Make it yours
Five ways to change it
Coffee
Steep 60 g of coarsely crushed roasted beans with the dairy at step 1, then strain them out. All of the aroma, none of the bitterness.
Real chocolate
Whisk 30 g cocoa into the dairy at step 1, then stir 100 g chopped dark chocolate into the hot custard at step 5.
Fresh mint
Steep a large handful of mint leaves (about 30 g) at step 1, then squeeze them out and strain. Pale green at best, and far better than the dyed sort.
Brown sugar & bourbon
Swap the sugar for light brown sugar and stir 2 tbsp bourbon in before churning. The alcohol keeps it softer straight from the freezer.
Chocolate flecks
Drizzle 85 g melted dark chocolate into the machine in the last minute of churning, so it shatters into fine flecks.
If it goes wrong
Rescue remedies
My custard went lumpy
It got too hot too quickly. Blitz it with a stick blender, push it through the sieve and carry on. Most batches are rescuable. Next time use a lower heat and keep the spatula moving.
It came out icy rather than creamy
Usually a base that was not cold enough, or a machine bowl that was not frozen solid. Chill the base overnight and give the bowl a full 24 hours in the freezer.
It sets like a brick
Homemade ice cream has none of the softeners commercial tubs rely on. Let it stand for 5 to 10 minutes before scooping, or add a tablespoon of vodka before churning: you will not taste it.
The vanilla flavour is faint
Extract loses its top notes in a hot pan. Add it off the heat at step 5, and use a pod when you can.
Next
Roasted strawberry
The no-egg base, and the roasting trick that keeps fruit ice cream from turning icy.
How to make ice cream without a machine
Four ways to freeze a batch when you have no ice cream maker.