Stop. I know what you’re thinking.
“Ice cream? Again?!”
Hear me out.
I love ice cream. LOVE IT. So, it’s not weird that I have not one, but two no churn variations already up on this site. Yes, I know. I’m usually a recipe one hit wonder, but I just love ice cream way too much!
Anyway, we’re in the middle of summer, and I hate buying pints of ice cream. Hate it. Like, they never have the flavor I want, or it doesn’t taste how I imagined it would. It really puts a downer on my love of ice cream, to be honest.
For some reason, I always have the insatiable urge to make something ice cream related for the nearest upcoming holiday. I made my dad an ice cream cake that one time, and had a less than pleasurable experience with the ice cream. Don’t get me wrong, the whole thing was amazingly delicious but the ice cream melted EVERYWHERE, within minutes of removal from the freezer. That, and I didn’t freeze the cake beforehand so whatever didn’t (or did?) melt, the cake soaked up. Again, not terribly bad but not what I wanted.
This time, I put in a lot of thought before coming up with what I wanted to make. The thing was, I wanted to figure out how to make the ice cream melt slower. I know, that’s a total oxymoron but I knew it was possible somehow. It didn’t hit me like a bag of bricks until I read this. I think I saw a literal light bulb go off, because it was just genius. STABILIZED WHIPPED CREAM. (why didn’t I think of that?!)
Okay, if you’ve seen my other no churn posts, you’ll notice that the base of this ice cream is whipped cream. Well, stabilizing it will help it hold up. How do you stabilize whipped cream? Omg. GELATIN. Not Jell-O (unless you’re going for a flavored ice cream, which now that I think about it, wouldn’t be a bad idea. I digress), but plain ol’ gelatin. How does this work?? Ah, now I’m getting excited!
Gelatin is a weird thing to work with. I’ve made Jell-O countless times before, but I never considered working with the plain stuff for anything other than that. First, you have to bloom the gelatin in cold water. The gelatin soaks up all the water, and starts getting gelatinous. Obviously.
This is the part where it starts getting a little weird. You have to melt the bloomed gelatin, just until the granules are dissolved. How will hot gelatin go into whipped cream? Cool ever so slightly. It needs to be liquid (duh) for this to work. Besides that, the cream needs to be at soft/medium-ish peaks.
The true science behind all of this is having both the cream and gelatin at the right consistency, so they’ll blend harmoniously and not leave you with lumps (been there, done that). I haven’t quite found that sweet spot but I’m working on it. I will say this, I don’t have messy ice cream anymore.
Now, let’s talk about this batch. In case you didn’t know, my blog turns 2 today!!!! YAY!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! What a better way to celebrate than with some ice cream?!
I decided to fancy it up by adding some good, old fashioned, caramel sauce to this batch. Part of me wanted to save it as a topping but I really just wanted to swirl it in. So I did. And had left over, so I topped it too. Happiness is a caramel-caramel sundae. While we’re being honest, I slightly burned the caramel (because I am sometimes an idiot and got too excited, and then I wanted to snap some pics but I waited too long to put in the cream. Whatever).
So, here’s why this no churn ice cream is on my site three times: it’s easy, it’s boozy, it’s creamy, it’s delicious, it’s totally legit, and is totally worthy of a threepeat.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go celebrate with some ice cream.
- 2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
- 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons cold water
- 2 cups (one pint) heavy whipping cream, cold
- 1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
- 2 tablespoons alcohol (I used whiskey, bourbon would be fab in here)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
- Bloom the gelatin: stir the gelatin into the cold water, and let stand until gelatin soaks up all the water. This should take about a minute.
- Once bloomed, transfer to a small pot and melt the gelatin over low heat just until the gelatin granules have dissolved. Remove from heat.
- While the gelatin cools slightly, whip the heavy cream to medium peaks. Slowly drizzle in the relatively cooled gelatin into the cream.
- Continue whipping the cream until slightly stiff peaks.
- In another bowl, combine the sweetened condensed milk, vanilla extract, alcohol, and salt.
- Gently fold the whipped cream, in batches, into the sweetened condensed milk mixture.
- Assemble: in a loaf pan or large container, spoon about a third of the ice cream mixture. Drizzle some dollops of the caramel sauce onto the layer of ice cream. Using a skewer or thin knife, swirl the caramel around the ice cream. Cover with another third of ice cream, and repeat the swirling process until all of the ice cream is in the pan/container.
- Cover well with plastic wrap and freeze for 8 hours, or overnight.
- Before serving, let ice cream soften for about a minute.
Stabilized No Churn Ice Cream adapted from Martha Stewart and Food.com
Caramel Sauce recipe adapted from Epicurious
