No-Churn Chocolate Heath Bar Ice Cream

getting warm here in Denver, which means it's time to start eating more ice cream. I've made ice cream from scratch a handful of times when visiting my mom and sister, who both have ice cream makers. I don't own one and I have often seen the women on a Swiss cooking show make ice cream without churning it in a machine. I figured it would be time to give this method a shot. I started looking in to it and there are a ton of very easy to make, no-churn ice cream recipes out there. I was in the mood for chocolate heath bar crunch ice cream, so I adapted this delicious recipe. Feel free to use whatever mix-ins you'd like with the chocolate ice cream.

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Lemon Blueberry Frozen Yogurt

Yup, another lemon dessert recipe to add to my blog. I actually made this froze yogurt a while ago, but it somehow got lost in all of my other recipes that I love. This frozen yogurt is the perfect, refreshing treat on a hot day. It was eaten in about 3 days the first time I made it. I also loved the blueberry sauce that gets mixed into the ice cream. It would be great with all sorts of other desserts, like pound cake, plain vanilla ice cream, or spread between cake layers. The texture is also great and it doesn't get too hard in the freezer, as some frozen yogurts do.

When you make this ice cream, my tip is to make large strips when you peel the lemon and to count how many strips you have. You don't want someone finding a piece of lemon peel in their frozen yogurt, and they're not the easiest things to find, especially when you think you've fished them all out, but you aren't quite sure. Also, be patient with the blueberry sauce. When I was first cooking it I didn't think it was going to work out, but then suddenly everything mixes together perfectly.

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Not-So-Rocky Road Ice Cream

Last week I was in Denver visiting my sister. One of the many perks of visiting her is getting to use her kitchen. She has lots of fun kitchen gadgets that I don't have at home, so I take advantage of them when I'm there. This last trip, I put the ice cream maker to work a couple of times. As I've mentioned before, she recently bought Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, a delicious ice cream cookbook with all sorts of different recipes. Some of her recipe are a bit too out there for me, like beet ice cream, but others sounds delicious. This recipe was definitely a winner.

I have always loved rocky road ice cream, but ever since I was a kid (and I don't really know why I always do this) I pick around the almonds. By the time I get to the bottom of a tub of rocky road, it's just a pile of rejected almond pieces. Go ahead and add some smoked almonds to this ice cream if you absolutely love them, but I was thrilled to finally have rocky road ice cream with all the good parts, but none of the rejects. The praline sauce is a very necessary addition to the rocky road creation. You can make it a few days ahead of time and store it in an airtight container in your fridge. It would also be a great topping for a bowl of store bough ice cream if you don't have the time/resources to make yourself homemade ice cream. If your are also a fan of Jeni Britton Bauer's recipes and like to keep tabs on what's what, this chocolate ice cream recipe is called milkiest chocolate ice cream in the world.

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Honeyed Peanut Ice Cream with Chocolate Flakes

My sister has been sending me some great recipes she's tried out, which I am more than thankful for since I'm not cooking nearly as much as I used to. This is mostly due to the fact that every kitchen I come across these days is lacking pretty basic essentials (like spatulas, or lids to pots). She recently bought a new ice cream cookbook and has been loving the recipes. This one is from an ice cream called Buckeye State Ice Cream, which I'm sure everyone back at home understands, but I've re-named it for the sake of all other readers. My sister really enjoyed the cream cheese base in this recipe, and I can't wait to try it myself one day.

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Chocolate Toffee Crunch Ice Cream

When it comes to ice cream, I used to be on the vanilla team in the battle of chocolate versus vanilla. As a kid, chocolate was rarely my flavor of choice, and I'd usually opt for vanilla if mint chocolate chip was not available. However, once I discovered the wonders of Ben and Jerry's and how they tweaked plain chocolate ice cream, I realized I had been missing out on this great flavor. Not only did I like chocolate ice cream, but it was even better with bits of brownies, marshmallows, or caramel. I decided to make this ice cream after I found some gourmet toffee in my sister's pantry. She claimed she would never use it, and I thought it would go perfectly in a batch of ice cream. After flipping through The Perfect Scoop for the 100th time, I decided to add the crushed up toffee pieces to a traditional chocolate ice cream. The result was phenomenal.

This is the one of the best chocolate ice creams I have ever had. The chocolate flavor is rich, but not too rich, the texture is creamy and smooth, and the toffee adds the perfect crunch. When making ice cream, it's sometimes difficult finding a recipe that will maintain a creamy consistency after it is fully frozen. This one, however, stays creamy and does not get hard and icy. It is everything that I would want from chocolate ice cream. If toffee is not your thing, feel free to add any other treat to the recipe, or just make plain chocolate ice cream.

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Lemon Ice Cream

 
I have to make a confession- the original plan for this ice cream included pieces of speculoos (crispy gingerbread) mixed into the final product. I baked the cookies a day earlier and had planned on using them, until I realized I should have added more spices to the cookie batter. This is what happens every now and then when experimenting with recipes. I think for every good recipe I find there is one that's pretty average. The speculoos were still good, but not quite right.

I went through with the ice cream plan anyway since I had all the ingredients ready and I love all lemony desserts. I added the sad excuse for speculoos to a small batch of ice cream and left the rest plain (I preferred the plain version). The result was a really creamy and light lemon ice cream. The flavor is not overwhelming, and hits the spot. Even my brother-in-law, the man who claims lemon desserts are awful, was loving this. The flavor of this ice cream makes it a really great summer treat, and I can imagine it would make a great ice cream pie.

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Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

 
Earlier this summer, I tried making mint ice cream, but it was a total disaster. It tasted like frozen heavy cream with a hint of mint, which was not what I was going for. Since mint chocolate chip is one of my favorite ice cream flavors, I was determined to find one that actually tasted good. I decided I wanted to try a recipe that used mint extract to get a stronger mint flavor in the ice cream. My first attempt at mint ice cream required fresh mint leaves, which sounded really good, but the mint flavor was not intense enough.

I accidentally found this recipe while looking for some outdoor/camping cooking recipes. I knew I wanted to try it since the ingredients sounded promising and the pictures looked great. This ice cream reminds me of the mint chocolate chip flavor I grew up with. I'm not a huge fan of using food coloring (mostly because I never have it and usually forget to buy it), so I kept the color natural, but you could easily add a couple drops of green color to get the more traditional mint ice cream look.

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Cookie Dough Ice Cream

 
As much as I love eating homemade ice cream, I sometimes avoid recipes that require making a custard. If you've never made ice cream, the custard needs to be slowly heated over a stove, and then chilled in the fridge before churning it in an ice cream machine. This recipe is great since all you have to do is mix ingredients together, churn, and freeze. The ingredients come together in 3 minutes, making this one of the easiest ice cream recipes I've made.

I made this ice cream with leftover chocolate chip cookie dough that I had at home, but you could just as easily use ready made cookie dough. Use as much or as little as you'd like, the amount of cookie dough listed in the recipe can be very loosely interpreted. You can even add extra chocolate chips if you want. I topped mine with chocolate syrup, but it is delicious on its own. It stays rich and creamy, even after days in the freezer.

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Roasted Banana Ice Cream

Happy 4th of July weekend. We've had beautiful, hot, sunny weather in Denver, which also means perfect conditions for nighttime fireworks (last year I watched fireworks in the rain). With this heat comes the never ending need to cool down. After neglecting the ice cream maker for a while, I decided to put my free time to use and make some roasted banana ice cream. As is often the case with my cooking and baking, this ice cream flavor was chosen because there were some spotted bananas in the fruit bowl, but nobody felt like having banana bread.

I recently read about making homemade banana ice cream by just freezing chunks of banana, and then throwing them in a food processor when you want to have ice cream. Sounds good, but I like my ice cream to be a little sweeter and more flavorful than that. This David Lebovitz recipe was the perfect solution to the banana problem. Even when frozen for a while, this ice cream remains creamy, thanks to the bananas.

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Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

The weather has been crazy here. It rains all night and in the mornings, then it reaches the 70s in the late afternoon. This has been messing with my baking and cooking moods like crazy. I wake up wanting hot cocoa and scones, and by the evening a salad sounds perfect. Today was another one of these crazy days. I woke up to clouds, some rain, and cool weather. By 10 am I called my neighbor to cancel our walk for the day since cloudy days make me unproductive and lazy. While talking to her, she commented on how it was a baking day, and I realized that was the perfect thing to do. I found a recipe for oatmeal cookies and got to work. The recipe suggested chilling the cookies before baking them, so they're currently sitting in the fridge.

But guess what happened during this chilling period... it got sunny. I'm no longer in the mood for warm, chewy cookies. Instead, I just had a huge bowl of strawberry cheesecake ice cream that I made last week. I had forgotten all about this ice cream since it hasn't really been the weather for it, but now seems like the perfect day to share this with you.

The flavor in the ice cream is all there: fresh strawberries, cream cheese, graham cracker crust. It's a really simple ice cream to make since there's no custard in this recipe and if you don't mind the texture of strawberry seeds, you can skip the step where they get removed. When you take it out of the freezer give it a minute to soften before digging in. Apparently you can make this with fresh or frozen strawberries, but since I went a bit strawberry happy at the farmer's market last week, I used fresh ones.

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Coffee Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

The ice cream obsession continues as every member in my family buys an ice cream maker (which I then adopt and temporarily claim as my own). Growing up, my dad's favorite ice cream flavor was coffee, which meant the freezer was always stocked with a tub of the stuff. It also meant that my whole family has grown to love coffee ice cream. While reading through my sister's copy of The Perfect Scoop last week, I saw a coffee ice cream recipe in there and knew I had to make it for my dad.

In my first ice cream making lesson, my sister taught me the trick to getting soft, creamy ice cream: liquor. I decided that I wanted to stick with that texture (how can you not love creamy ice cream?) and added some Kahlua to the ice cream. And because I can be a 5 year old sometimes, I threw in some chopped chocolate. You can omit the Kahlua if you're really against it, but the ice cream will get pretty hard. You don't actually taste the Kahlua, but you will appreciate the ice cream consistency it creates. At this point, I think I will add liquor to most of the ice cream I make (when it's appropriate). Having tried various ice cream consistencies, I prefer the "spiked" ones.

I'm currently snacking on bowl number 2 of this goodness as I type. It's addictive, and possibly slightly dangerous in my hands. Anyone that knows me is aware of how hyper I can get, especially with the addition of caffeine and sugar. You can buy decaf coffee beans if you're not into the caffeinated ice cream concept. You can also add lots more chocolate if you want, but I prefer the surprise bite of chocolate here and there over 10 chocolate chips per bite. So before I start bouncing off the walls, I will give you this oh-so-good recipe. It rivals Haagen Dazs, which is considered the best coffee ice cream in my book (sorry Haagen Dazs). Have I talked you into an ice cream maker yet?
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Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

My sister recently got an ice cream maker attachment for her KitchenAid and has been on a homemade ice cream kick ever since. When I first came to visit her, she had made an amazing zabaglione ice cream that was very addictive. This weekend we decided to tackle frozen yogurt (it's healthy, right?) since we had tons of strawberries in the house. Not only is making frozen yogurt pretty easy, but it actually tastes like the fruit it is made of.

Store bought strawberry frozen yogurt from often tastes like artificial flavoring, but this tasted like real (macerated) strawberries. This recipe is a perfect refreshing summer treat. It's texture is similar to sorbet and is not as soft as a frozen yogurt, unless you eat it straight away without completely freezing it. Once you give this a try, you'll realize that you've been missing out on the homemade frozen sweets phenomenon.

This recipe is from David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop, which is filled with tons of inspiring desserts. He has recipes for everything from avocado ice cream to cantaloupe sorbet to butterscotch pecan ice cream. Looking through that book, I wanted to try everything at once. If it's in your budget to get an ice cream maker this summer, I highly recommend it. Not only will your ice cream be delicious, but you'll know exactly what's going into it.

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