Healthy and Delicious: 30 Homemade Mason Jar Ice Cream Recipes to Try (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret ingredient to ice cream? ›

The cream cheese helps create an ice cream with a denser, smoother texture. As explained by TASTE, cream cheese acts as a stabilizer in ice cream, preventing water from seeping out of the milk and cream as well as preventing the formation of ice crystals that detract from ice cream's creaminess.

This summer I have been using my tiniest 4-ounce, mason jars to store individual servings of ice cream for the kids. After giving my ice cream maker a whirl, I divide the frosty goodness into the small mason jars, twist on the lids and store them in the freezer.

Adding candy pieces, nuts or dried or fresh fruit to your ice cream can add a whole new flavor and texture dimension. Mix-ins should be small, around the size of a chocolate chip, so the ice cream maker can incorporate them into the frozen ice cream.

If you have ever made ice cream, you already know what goes into it, ingredients such as milk, cream, and sugar. But there is one main ingredient that you may not have thought about, probably because you can't see it—air.

Most home ice cream recipes call for simple table sugar, which is chemically known as sucrose. But in pro kitchens you have more options. Liquid sugars like invert sugar, corn syrup, honey, and glucose syrup all add body, creaminess, and stability to ice cream, and a little goes a long way.

The more water there is in your ice cream, the more likely it will be to form ice crystals. You can normally swap out water for coconut milk or heavy cream.

Regular mouth jars are not recommended for freezing because of the shoulders. As we know, when liquid freezes it expands. Therefore it is critical that enough headspace is available to allow for this expansion. However, even leaving plenty of headspace the regular mouth jars can crack.

Nearly any milk will work, and you can substitute half-and-half for the cream.

Whole milk – I don't recommend replacing it with reduced fat or skim. Whole milk's higher fat content ensures that the homemade ice cream comes out creamy, not icy. Cane sugar – For sweetness. Vanilla extract – For warm vanilla flavor.

If your ice cream tastes greasy and leaves an unpleasantly cloying film in your mouth, then the butterfat content is probably too high. Try using less cream and more milk. And check the butterfat content using my ice cream calculator.

Why is my homemade ice cream not creamy enough? ›

So you can up the fat in your ice cream by substituting cream for milk or half-and-half in recipes. Even more effective, is that you can also add more egg yolks if making a custard-based ice cream, which will increase the creaminess due to their emulsifying properties.

Eggs add rich flavor and color, prevent ice crystallization and help create smooth and creamy ice cream.

Depends on what (or who) you're trying to recreate. You can make Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia cheaper at home. But you'll lose money copying Edy's Cookie Cobblestone Ice Cream (especially if it's on sale). Turns out heavy whipping cream is pretty expensive, at least in comparison to the other ingredients you'll need.

Of course, the main ingredients in ice cream come from milk–and the most important part of that is milkfat, which gives ice cream its smoothness and creamy texture. In fact, in order to be called ice cream, the USDA requires it to contain at least 10 percent milkfat, which can come from milk or cream.

Fat. A great ice cream owes its smooth, creamy mouthfeel to fat, which helps keep ice crystals small. As Bauer explains, fat is also extraordinarily effective at carrying flavors, so when ice cream melts in your mouth, you are hit with the taste of your ingredients.

At its core ice cream is a successful emulsion of fat into water, sugar, and ice with air mixed into the batch. An emulsion is a mixture of two substances that typically separate (like oil and water). But, instead mix together to form the consistent creamy base used for ice cream. It's Science!

To continue our bread analogy: As bakers add sugar to bread to keep it soft and moist, ice cream makers alter consistency with sugar. By binding with liquids, sugar molecules prevent an ice cream base from fully freezing into crunchy ice. That is, the more sugar you add, the softer and less icy your batch will be.