up till now i'd always considered making your own icecream to be a silly stunt thing to do, requiring an expensive piece of equipment, expensive ingredients (compared to the cost of the finished, premade product from the store) and a generally worse final outcome. i still largely believe these things, but i got a kmart-spec ice cream machine for 7aud at an op shop last week and am giving it a go anyway!

i was really inspired by brian david gilbert's excellent ice cream video, and thusly started by following his advice and his basic recipe (the ben and jerrys sweet cream #1 recipe). his recipes are here!

00 ben and jerry's sweet cream #1

ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 3/4 cups sugar

instructions

1. whisk eggs and slowly add the sugar
2. in a separate pan, warm the milk and heavy cream over low heat
3. mix a small portion of the hot cream mixture in with the egg mixture to temper it
4. add the egg mixture to the pan with the hot cream mixture and heat it on low while stirring until the whole mixture reaches 75c. immediately take it off the heat and chill in the fridge
5. once chilled, add the mixture to your ice cream maker
6. once the ice cream is complete, move it to a new container and put it in the fridge to chill up properly

thoughts

💀💀💀💀💀
i haven't actually made this one! i'm currently just using it as a base

01 maple syrup

2026-05-19

ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 3/4 cups maple syrup

instructions

1. whisk eggs and slowly add the maple syrup
2. in a separate pan, warm the milk and heavy cream over low heat
3. mix a small portion of the hot cream mixture in with the egg mixture to temper it
4. immediately take it off the heat and chill in the fridge
5. once chilled, add the mixture to your ice cream maker
6. once the ice cream is complete, move it to a new container and put it in the fridge to chill up properly

thoughts

🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑

this seemed like a good middleground to start on - not entirely basic but not too complicated so that i could knock out the initial technique. i did a couple of things wrong - i actually entirely forgot to heat the ice cream to 75c, and im not sure how key that is to the texture, but i suspect you're making more of a custard than a regular milky situation. i also ran the ice cream maker for an hour instead of 30 min (my ice cream makers recommended running time) because it wasnt stiffening up as quickly as i wanted, but it might have been the better move to just trust it this time and set a baseline. i quietly suspect that running it over time actually resulted in it losing coldness near the end. in any case, i was surprised at how well the maple syrup subbed in at a 1:1 volume for the sugar - the sweetness level is good and the maple flavour is very easy to catch