How to make ice cream that is not rock hard

[Sunflower101]

Decided to try my ice cream maker again....give it another go....I have an ice cream maker and churn it until it’s soft ice cream but needs a bit longer to solidify a bit more. It’s a basic homemade vanilla custard and cream recipe. few hours later it’s rock hard and when it’s softened up a bit to eat it’s not the same texture as that you buy. Anyone have any tips to share to obtain lovely ice cream? I know the big brands ice cream is not like homemade ice cream as it’s likely to have a few unnatural ingredients in it but there are ice creams I can buy that claim they don’t. How do they do it?

Making a proper egg custard base makes the best texture. High sugar and fat content is important too.

Air is the ice cream-maker’s friend (infact I think Margaret Thatcher wrote her PhD on how to incorporate as much air into ice cream as possible). And so it’s air that makes it soft. If you add whisked egg white to the mixture it will help incorporate air and it will be softer. It’s a long time since I made ice cream so can’t remember the ratios but would start with a couple.

Think I might get my machine out of the cupboard now and have a play.

instant ice cream
frozen fruit of choice
icing sugar
cream
blitz together and serve immediately.

I found the custard bases always go rock hard. We go for the simple approach now of blitzed fresh fruit and double cream. Stays soft and is perfect.

I’ve not seen an ice cream recipe which uses egg white.
It was an egg custard using blue top milk that I made as a base for the ice cream and then added some lightly whipped double cream into it before churning. I did wonder if there are better recipes out there somewhere that I have not found yet that are not on bbc food website which is my go to website...

We make ice cream using milk and cream recipes rather than custard base. It tends to be soft scoop consistency when churned.

This is one of our family favourites and the texture is sublime.

www.nigella.com/recipes/one-step-no-churn-coffee-ice-cream

Thanks for all your ideas

Put some booze in it

More sugar or alcohol

MIL's recipe is genius and very creamy. Use one tin of condensed milk. Get a carton of cream that's approx the same amount as the milk, I think it's about 350 ml. Whisk together until thoroughly mixed. You can add eg vanilla essenece, lemon zest etc.