In the most memorable scene in Roman Holiday , Audrey Hepburn sits on the Spanish steps in Rome, basking in the sun, enjoying a chocolate gelato. It captures perfectly the sentiment that there are few things in life that blend as well as a hot summer’s day and a cone of quickly melting ice cream, trickling down your arm faster than you can eat it.
Most people shy away from making ice cream at home because it is commonly believed that an ice-cream maker is a necessity for good ice cream. I’m here to tell you that it is possible to make superlative ice cream with nothing but a hand mixer and a freezer. If you don’t have a hand mixer, you can use a whisk, and if you don’t have a freezer, you can still make ice cream like they did in the 18th century — with ice and salt and a little bit of upper body strength.
Although an ice-cream maker does make the process more convenient, its absence is hardly an impediment. The machine helps in cooling the mixture while churning it to incorporate air and makes it light and airy. Most importantly, it prevents ice crystals from forming, ensuring that the ice cream is creamy and smooth. However, you can achieve the same results by using condensed milk. This magic ingredient helps the ice cream set without forming crystals and keeps it soft. Alcohol is another ingredient that helps in making the ice cream soft and reduce the crystals by lowering the freezing point of the mixture.
Cookbook writer and TV show host Rachel Khoo has a fun alternative for those without an ice-cream maker or a freezer. Place the mixture in a plastic ziplock, and then place the ziplock in a bigger bag filled with ice cubes and a little salt. Shake the bag vigorously for 8-10 minutes. Not only do you get ice cream in less time than it takes to boil pasta, it will rival the best soft serve you can buy. The upper arm workout that you get in the process will make you feel less guilty about the second serving you will surely reach for.
Incidentally, the oldest English recipe for ice cream appears in a cookbook called Mrs Mary Eales’s Receipts ; similar to Khoo’s method, it called for pots of the mixture to be covered with straw and surrounded by ice and salt. Although the recipe dates back to the 18th century, ice cream had already been made in England for a while by then. King Charles I paid his ice-cream maker a lifetime pension to keep the recipe a secret! The French, always quick to catch on to a trend, had however been making ice cream for a whole century prior to this — Catherine de’ Medici, who married Henry II of France, brought with her Italian chefs who made sorbets and ices. An interesting detail to note is that in L’Art de Bien Faire Les Glaces d’Office , a French cookbook, a recipe gives instructions to make ice cream that was not smooth and creamy, but textured and crunchy with ice crystals — a completely different outlook on the matter from today.
The wonderful thing about making ice cream at home is that you can let your imagination run wild. The possibilities for flavours are endless. Besides the usual berries and banana, almost any fruit can be turned into a tub of ice cream. Jackfruit and jaggery, plums, passion fruit are all flavours that are worth experimenting with. And unlike store-bought ice cream, you can ensure that the ingredients used are the freshest and healthiest.
There are two ways of incorporating flavours into ice cream. The first is to add the flavour to the base mixture of condensed milk. When incorporating fruit purée, this is the route to take: Simply purée the fruit, strain and stir into the condensed milk. However, if you’d like streaks or ribbons of flavour running through, do it at the very end, after the whipped cream has been incorporated into the condensed milk. Gently fold in the flavour (chocolate, peanut butter, jam) and proceed to freeze. This is also the stage where you would add ingredients for texture, such as nuts, coarsely cut chocolate and crushed candy.
The last ice cream my mother and I made was jackfruit and coconut with jaggery swirls. This year I’m thinking of trying out star fruit with ginger. The recipe given is the perfect blank slate to incorporate whichever flavours catch your fancy. Now all you have to do is find the perfect spot to enjoy your homemade ice cream and soak in some summer sun.
Aysha Tanya is a food writer based in Bengaluru
No-churn ice cream (Adapted from Martha Stewart) 400g condensed milk 400 ml fresh cream 1/2 cup fruit purée of your choice (optional) 1 tbsp vanilla extract (if not adding fruit purée) 1 In a medium-sized bowl, mix the condensed milk with the fruit purée or vanilla extract. 2 In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream until soft peaks form. 3 Gently stir in the condensed milk mixture. 4 Pour into a freezer-proof pan or a loaf tin with the dimensions 4.5-by-8.5 inch and freeze for six hours or overnight. |