Awesome Father’s Day gift. It’s passively cooled kind with the bowl you out in the freezer.

Any recipes or tips to share? I’m thinking I’ll start with espresso and choc chips.

Lots of recipes on line. I always add a bit of alcohol for flavour and it gives a softer scoop from the freezer. Get everything as cold as possible, so put the containers you are going to use to keep the ice cream (I used plastic takeaway ones) in the freezer first.

If it’s a pre-freeze bowl, don’t try and make too much in one go.

My freezer bowl one was replaced after 2 uses with a built in freezer one, the same type they use on Masterchef etc.

https://www.cuisinart.co.uk/ice-cream-and-gelato-professional-ICE100BCU.html

Sorbets are easy and worth trying – did this one in the week: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/jun/15/how-to-make-the-perfect-chocolate-sorbet-recipe-felicity-cloake , sooooo good!

I really, really like ice cream.

Makes sure you leave the bowl for long enough, overnight isn’t usually enough to to fully freeze. Don’t try and be lazy and pour the mixture into the bowl before turning it on.

I like frozen yogurt, simple and relatively healthy and you can just add some fruit compote to it.

Top tip.

Tin of condensed milk.
Two tubs of extra thick cream.
Whisk until ridges form.
Decant.
Freeze.
8Hours later…. scoff.

Best ice cream ever.

and

Throw away your ice cream gadget, before sits at the back of the cupboard forever.

Goes without saying really, but the quality of your custard prep (including ingredients like chocolate) is directly proportional to the quality of your ice cream. Prepare for everything to be a bit more delicately flavoured that you’re probably used to from commercial ice cream. Alcohol makes for softer ice-cream. Food colouring is fun.

I like the dark chocolate sorbet recipe here: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/food-drink/article/ice-cream-recipes

Look up a recipe of Brown Bread Ice Cream. Ice cream thats good for you. Sort of.

I’ve used the recipes from the Cuisinart web site for vanilla, chocolate and coffee. They all taste incredible but be warned they have a huge calorie count so go easy.

Keep your eyes open for wild raspberries when out riding.

Pass through a sieve and add to your ice cream mixture.

I keep eyeing up icecream maker attachements for the kenwood chef.

but it would be SO dangerous to my health

I was given some Mars bars and Dairy Milk bars along with it, so I thought I’d use them for my first effort. I like to memorise things rather than follow printouts of recipes so I wanted a simple procedure I could memorise. I put in about 300ml each of cream and whole milk in a pan, and when it was warm I lobbed in a small bar of DM which melted nicely. Except I singed the milk every so slightly so it sort of tasted a bit like dulce de leche, which isn’t a bad thing but not really chocolatey. No worries, my wife doesn’t like actual chocolate ice cream anyway.

Whisked 3 egg yolks with 100g sugar, then poured in the hot milk and put it back in the pan. Heated it up very gingerly because I’ve always scrambled the eggs in the past trying to make custard, but it went well. Still tastes like dulce de leche. Then, because it was evening and we’re impatient, I cooled it to about 2-3C using an ice bath. Lots of opportunities for a bit of science talk with my daughter.

Chucked it in the mixer and it worked out pretty well – churned until it was like a McDonald’s milkshake but the consistency of soft serve, then in the freezer. Just gave some to my daughter and it’s the right consistency – quite hard but scoopable, I’ve definitely had harder from the shops.

Next time I’m going to try just plain vanilla, I’ll also give it a try with less cream and/or fewer/no eggs.

We got rid of ours, hadn’t used it in years

It lost some of the magic of ice cream for me, I suddenly realised how much bad stuff is in ice cream, before I was naively in the dark! Nothing wrong with the product, but all the cream and sugar going in there was an eye opener!

When you’re making the ice creama, it first spends a while as liquid and you think there’s no chance it’ll become ice cream, but go away and come back later and it’s spot on

They do make nice ice cream but, honestly, I give it a month tops before it’ll be in the back of The Cupboard of That Kind of Stuff.

We moved house with one three times, unused all that time, before I was able to persuade MrsIHN that we maybe didn’t need to move with it a fourth, and it went in the pre-move clear-out.

Nothing wrong with the product, but all the cream and sugar going in there was an eye opener!

Hah.. I think of my ice cream as better because it only has cream, sugar, milk and eggs in it, and not a long list of additives.

Most of the recipes I see have you heating up the mix and essentially making custard first. Is this always necessary? I thought it was just frozen milk/cream.

I’ve got a Cuisinart one I think. Came with a few basic recipe’s. My top is make the chocolate one but replace the dark chocolate with Terry’s chocolate orange. You won’t be disappointed!

Nothing wrong with the product, but all the cream and sugar going in there was an eye opener!

No worse than cake though (probably very similar amounts of sugar and butter to the sugar and cream used in ice cream). Think of it as a treat and all is dandy.

With unbridled cunning I got the OH a top level ice cream maker for a big birthday. I am vegan … 😈 … it turned out not to be too hard to reverse engineer and improve on commercial vegan ice-cream, and then the rhubarb ice-cream and sorbet came along (chef’s kiss) – suffice to say ice cream making has to be banned regularly as I get too fat!

Any recommendations on here re the “device” to choose? I normally go for budget models if any are decent ..+ would prefer simple if possible. Thanks in advance Bill

Mine is a £20 Amazon job (I can get a link if needed) and it’s super basic but it has worked well enough on the first go. It’s just a pot lined with what I assume is water, with a clip-on lid containing a motor with an on-off switch, and a paddle inserted on the underside. It was bought because it was small and we don’t have a lot of cupboard space; and the pot can live in our freezer until it’s needed.

Oh, if you are doing custard based ice cream, this is awesome:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/KitchenCraft-Home-Thermometer-Sugar-Spoon/dp/B00BIJWQWC/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3KRR9C2YEMDV0&keywords=temperature+spoon&qid=1655827191&sprefix=temperature+spoon%2Caps%2C92&sr=8-6

No more guessing if you’ve taken the custard too far/not far enough

I have (and used) a probe but that spoon looks ace ta.