The place to start when making ice cream is with the Sweet Cream Base. It contains the basic ingredients for lots of recipes, and then you can add flavorings to make whatever you want.

A great book to start with is Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book. It’s filled with no-nonsense recipes that are easy to make, and taste fantastic. Their recipe for the Sweet Cream Base is a pretty common one, and I’ve used it enough times to have it memorized. I like recipes with eggs because I think they make a creamier, more custard-like texture, but see the second recipe below if you want to make an ice cream without eggs.

If you’re looking to duplicate your favorite super-premium ice cream, this is the one you’ll want:

Ben & Jerry’s Sweet Cream Base #1

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 cup whole milk

2 large eggs

3/4 cup sugar

Makes about one quart.

19.1% butterfat.

The basic process:

Mix the cream and milk together and heat over medium-low heat.

While that’s heating, mix the eggs and sugar in a separate bowl.

When the cream/milk mix reaches about 140° F (60° C), remove it from the heat. While whisking the egg/sugar mix, slowly add small amounts of the cream/milk mix until about a third of the cream and milk have been added. (This is called “tempering”, and prevents the eggs from being scrambled.) Then pour the egg/sugar mix back into the pot with the remaining cream and milk, so everything’s together.

Then continue heating it to kill anything that shouldn’t be in there, especially salmonella, which is a nasty bacteria that can come from raw eggs and make people pretty sick. Heating the mix also gives the ice cream a “cooked” flavor, like the taste of warm milk. Heat the mix over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until it reaches 175° F (79° C) and hold it there for at least 25 seconds (the FDA’s official requirement for pasteurization).

Strain the mix into a container and let it cool for a bit before adding extracts that might evaporate. Add a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract, pure peppermint extract, or ground cinnamon at this point to make those easy flavors.

Chill the mix until it’s below 40° F (5° C). This is important, because the mix needs to be chilled before it’s run through the machine, so it freezes faster. The faster the mix freezes, the smaller the ice crystals will be, and the smoother the texture. You can chill it covered in the fridge, or if you’re in a hurry, either stir the mix in a metal bowl that’s inside another metal bowl containing ice water, or use my latest favorite method and put the mix in a zip-top plastic bag and then dunk that in a bowl of ice water.

If you have a machine with a built-in freezer, turn it on and let it get good and cold. If you have a machine that uses a frozen bowl, be sure it’s completely frozen — 24 hours or more is best. Then turn on the motor so the dasher starts spinning, and pour in the mix.

It’ll take about 30 minutes, more or less, to churn. You’ll probably be able to hear the motor slowing down when it gets close, and you should probably stop it before it really starts having trouble. The ice cream will come out like stiff soft-serve ice cream.

If you have other things to mix into the ice cream like candy, nuts, or chocolate, you can sometimes add them to the machine just before the end of the churning, but I’ve found that it’s easier to just freeze the ice cream by itself and then transfer the ice cream to a pre-chilled bowl where you can fold in the ingredients afterward. If you’re mixing in something soft like cookies, or something you want to swirl in, you’ll want to use this method anyway because they don’t do well in a machine.

Use a pre-chilled spoon to get all of the ice cream into pre-chilled containers and into the freezer as quickly as possible. Put it in the coldest part of the freezer, which is usually near the air vents at the back. After a few hours in the freezer, the ice cream will harden and be like what you buy in the store. I use cardboard ice cream containers that freeze quickly and look great. Plus you can write the flavor and the date on the lid.

Of course, you could also just eat it right out of the machine. Especially if it’s the first batch you’ve ever made.

A quicker way:

If the whole idea of cooking the mix just seems like too much work, you might see if you can find pasteurized eggs where you live. You’ll be able to skip the cooking completely, and can even combine all the ingredients using a blender. Take a look at my post about pasteurized eggs for more info.

Or you can try Ben & Jerry’s second base recipe, which doesn’t use eggs, and therefore doesn’t require cooking. They recommend eating it right away since it tends to turn icy in the freezer. Just mix everything together until the sugar is dissolved, and then continue with the instructions above starting with chilling the mix before churning it.

Ben & Jerry’s Sweet Cream Base #2

2 cups heavy whipping cream

3/4 cup sugar

2/3 cup half-and-half

Makes about one quart.

22.0% butterfat.

So go make a batch and report back!