No Churn Ice Cream

I love my ice cream maker. It's one of my favorite kitchen appliances. But, admittedly, the process of making a custard and churning ice cream and cleaning out the frozen bowl is taxing. That's where no churn ice cream comes in. I borrowed this recipe from Nigella Lawson, my favorite English chef (sorry, Jamie Oliver). I tried to make it a few weeks ago but we didn't have any cream in the fridge and I ended up making a frozen cheesecake instead.

But, the week that we ran out of the cheesecake, I made sure to add double cream to my grocery list.

Ingredients [yields 3 pints]:

14 oz. sweetened condensed milk

1 pint heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon salt

+ flavorings

+ mix-ins

It's a mind bogglingly easy recipe that really only requires two ingredients: sweetened condensed milk and double cream, but I like to add in an additional two for flavor: salt and vanilla.

So, start by pouring the condensed milk, heavy cream, salt, and vanilla to a bowl and then whip the heck out of it until it's fluffy.

The mixture should be fluffy and stiff enough to resemble whipped cream. At this point, the mixture can be scooped into air tight containers and chucked in the freezer to chill. That is, if you want delicious, but plain, vanilla ice cream.

But, if you're like me, you'll want to take this opportunity to flavor the ice creams. I decided to go fruity with one batch and decadent with the other.

For the fruity ice cream, I scooped about 2 cups of the ice cream into a bowl and added the zest of one lemon and some defrosted frozen blueberries.

Swirled together, the ice cream looked gorgeous. I scooped it into an airtight container (I love using my leftover Talenti gelato containers) and popped the tub into the freezer.

I had about 3½ to 4 cups of ice cream base left in my mixing bowl and I decided to turn it into a super decadent batch. I added in heaping spoonfuls of Nutella, mini chocolate chips, marshmallows, and sprinkles. I made sure not to mix the ice cream base too much so that there would still be some large, unmixed swirls of Nutella.

I scooped this stuff into two more air tight containers and chucked them in the freezer too.

About 6 hours later, the ice cream was ready for me to devour.

The ice cream is soft and easily scoopable and whether it's going into a cup or a cone, it's awesome. The texture is amazing. It's velvety and rich and sweet and amazing that it required zero heat and zero churning. I fell in love with the fragrant, lemony sweet berry ice cream but I was over the moon smitten with the Nutella version.

Here's the recipe page: