How is the best ice cream made?

The best ice cream is rich, creamy, and melts deliciously in your mouth. Whether it's store-bought or home-made, the best ice cream is prepared with simple, quality ingredients that can be easily found at your local grocery store.

The basics

Preparing the cream
- Great ice cream is made using a custard base that includes egg yolks, cream, and sugar. To make the custard, the cream is heated on the stove-top until it simmers, while the egg yolks and sugar are whisked together in a separate bowl. - A small amount of the warm cream is slowly added to the egg mixture in order to gradually heat up or 'temper' the eggs. This is done because adding all of the hot cream to the eggs would immediately scramble the eggs and this would ruin the ice cream. - Once the egg mixture has been tempered, it can be slowly incorporated into the saucepan of warm cream on the stove-top. The mixture must be heated and whisked until it thickens and can thinly coat the back of a spoon. - Next, the custard must be thoroughly cooled in the refrigerator. The cooled mixture can then be poured into the ice cream maker, where it will be churned until it transforms into the icy, creamy treat that everyone loves.

Flavours

Typical flavours
One of the most fun and enjoyable things about ice cream is its multitude of flavours. Typical ice cream flavours include vanilla, chocolate and strawberry but anything can be added to the basic custard recipe to produce a unique ice-cream flavour.

Make it at Home

How to prepare home made ice-cream?
Ice cream may seem like an essentially shop-bought item, but it is easy and quick to prepare at home, especially if you have an electric ice cream maker. All you have to do is make the custard, add the flavouring and pour it into the machine. If you don't have an electric ice-cream maker, you may use a small tin with a tight fitting lid, a large tin (a coffee can works great) with a tight fitting lid, ice, and salt. Put your ice cream mixture into the small tin and cover tightly with the lid, then place it inside the large tin and distribute the ice and salt evenly around it.
Seal the large tin with its lid and start rolling the tin across the floor.
After thirty minutes, open up the tins and you'll have freshly churned, delicious, home-made ice cream.