About 3 years ago I bought my Fiance a Cuisinart Ice cream maker. It came with a Cuisinart Ice Cream Deluxe handbook and we’ve tried quite a few of them. But so far there is a few clear winners – Cookies & Cream and Mint Chocolate Chip. So here is our favourite recipe and a few of our cheaty tips.
Tip 1: You really do need to Prep the Freezer bowl at least 12 hours before hand. Basically you don’t want it to be sloshing when you take it out of the freezer. We tend to put the frozen food from the freezer around and in it to help it freeze faster. We always put the freezer bowl in the Tesco (thick plastic) bag for life to prevent us getting freezer burn.
So we use the Vanilla Ice Cream recipe which serves 6-8 people
Ingredients
330ml Milk
250g Granulated Sugar
650ml double cream
Tip 2: Double Cream comes in 100, 300 or 600ml tubs… just use 600ml of cream, it works just as well and its silly to faff around trying to get 50ml of extra cream. (its got to be ever so slightly better for you too)
2 tsp Vanilla extract
Recipe
Pour the milk and sugar into a medium bowl and whisk until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the cream and vanilla, cover and chill if time allows.
Tip 3: When preparing to make ice cream we put the Milk bottle and the Cream tubs into the freezer for an hour or 2 before starting and put the glass bowl for mixing in, in the fridge. This will help speed up the making process once you have started. You want the Cream to be really thick but not solid when you take it out. Using a hand whisk is fine but for the best finish its easier to use an electric whisk. We then return the mix (in the bowl)- to the freezer for an hour.
Tip 4: By freezing the ingredients as we go and by making a plain recipe first (ie cookies and cream) we are able to use the machine twice. Making it more time effective.
Turn the Appliance on, pour the mixture into the freezer bowl and leave the ice cream to churn, 20-25 minutes. This will produce a soft ice cream. For a firm ice cream, transfer to an air tight container and place in the freezer for 2 hours.
For cookies and cream add 180g coarsely chopped cookies e.g chocolate chip through the lid during the last 5 minutes of mixing
Tip 5: Make the cookie chunks big because the cookies get soggy in the mix. If you make it too fine you can’t taste them.
Tip 6: Each of these recipes fill 2 600ml cream tubs and 1 300ml cream tub (half a 600ml). So we have taken to keeping the cream tubs and putting the ice cream into these to freeze for a later day. Works well and is free!
Tip 7: A rubber spatula is the best way to completely scrape out all the ice cream from the bowl before you start the next mix. This won’t damage the bowl.
For Mint Chocolate Chip omit the vanilla and replace with 1 tsp of peppermint extract. Chop 100g of Milk Chocolate into very small pieces and add through the lid during the last 5 minutes of mixing.
*** This recipe is from the Cuisinart – Ice Cream Deluxe Manual ***
