Make Weird, Wonderful Ice Cream Without the Work

It’s hot, so I want ice cream. Okay—it doesn’t have to be hot for me to want ice cream. That said, I do feel a lot better about having ice cream when it’s homemade ice cream.

Homemade ice cream has a taste that’s just so fresh and delicious. And making it yourself allows you to pack cookies, candies, fruit, and whatever else you want into one bowl. Heck, you can put carrots and cardamom into it, if you want. In fact, that sort of experimentation is heavily encouraged in No Churn Ice Cream.

This book inspires readers to make some pretty weird, often wonderful flavors. Even better, you don’t need rock salt or some type of contraption that needs the deep freeze for 24 hours. Instead, No Churn Ice Cream has an easier way—as well as a whole lot of recipes.

Leslie Bilderback, the same author who taught us how to make mug desserts and spiralized main courses, provides several interesting options, as well as plenty of old standbys. The hook on this book is that ice cream is as easy as mixing fresh ingredients in a bowl and popping that medley into the freezer. There are plenty of complex offerings too, with interesting flavor combinations such as Orange Flower Water-Almond Ice Cream, Pineapple-Pepper Ice Cream, Beet-Pistachio Sorbet, and much more.

Even though the idea is that this process is simple, the book shows you plenty of ways to pimp your ice cream concoctions, with purees, swirls, cookies, candies, and more. The idea of crushing up circus animal cookies and layering them into ice cream had me frothing at the mouth.

To start, however, I wanted to keep things simple, so I opted for old-fashioned mint chip. Although all of these recipes can be made with a whisk and the power of your biceps, I opted to use my KitchenAid mixer, which made things easy-peasy. The key is to whip the cream and fold in remaining ingredients. Once everything is blended, just pop the mixture into the fridge for six hours. Any freezable container can become your ice cream container. I opted for a loaf pan, but you can upcycle old containers if you’re a budding Breyers.

Of course, it’s really hard to wait the full six hours, so don’t be ashamed to sample after about four. My first attempt was minty delicious, even though I sort of messed up by not chopping the chocolate. I guess I was too excited and didn’t read the directions thoroughly. Even after the mixture was frozen, it was easy to remix into a different bowl. Either way, it didn’t keep us from scarfing it down.

Next, I wanted to try something with a bit more flair—and this book has plenty of those options. I played it semi-safe though, by making Moon Pie Ice Cream. I am wondering if I will ever make (or eat) another flavor again. Oh my. This was a little slice of heaven covered in a big slice of marshmallow fluff. It was simply awesome and made me more excited about trying the rest of the recipes in the book.

However, I opted to wrap up my review process by checking out another old-fashioned flavor: vanilla. In my opinion, if you’ve got a good vanilla recipe, the world is your oyster—at least the ice cream world. With this basic flavor, you can stir in all sorts of goodies, including the aforementioned animal cookies (which I loved).

Just know that despite being simple, some of these recipes do not have simple ingredients. For instance, the vanilla recipe calls for actual vanilla bean. In my area, the cheapest I could find vanilla beans in a pinch were two for $10. Upon seeing this price, my eyes popped like something out of an old cartoon. When I showed these magic beans to my husband and told him the price, he said I could have picked up two gallons of already-made ice cream for the same money. However, the cost was for the greater good. You could probably substitute extract, but that wouldn’t be by the book now, would it? Just don’t be afraid to experiment, or at least do a little bargain shopping. (I know that affordable vanilla beans can be found online, but I wasn’t willing to wait!) The point of the book is that ice cream can be a simple but also creative process. However, you probably don’t want to blow your budget on well… beans.

Still, it was fantastic. It was even more fantastic when I stirred those little frosting-covered animal cookies in. Or chocolate chips. Or chocolate-covered pretzels. Yum.

I definitely want to get more adventurous with my ice cream making, and this is the book to help make that happen. No Churn Ice Cream is filled with recipes that are fun—and ones that are funky (in a good way). The next flavors on my must-try list include Blueberry-Blue Cheese Ice Cream, Apple-Spice Ice Cream, Blood Orange Sherbet, and Cardamom. I will check those out after one more round of Moon Pie, of course. If you’re in the mood for ice cream (hello, everyone!), I’d recommend that you pick up this book, pull out a freezable bowl, and get to work!

GeekMom received this item for review purposes.