Top 15 Homemade Ice Cream Recipes: Custard, No-Churn, Sorbet and Kulfi

A cooked custard is the richest foundation for ice cream, but egg yolks curdle the moment they overheat, so the technique matters. Warm your cream and milk gently, whisk the yolks with the sugar until pale, then temper: dribble a little hot cream into the yolks while whisking to bring them up to temperature slowly, then return everything to the pan. Cook over low-to-medium heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon at around 82C/180F. Go past 85C and the eggs scramble.

If you do not trust the eyeball test, use a thermometer and pull the pan off the heat the instant it hits 82C, then strain the custard through a sieve to catch any stray cooked bits. Chill it thoroughly — ideally overnight — before churning, because a cold base freezes faster and freezing fast is what keeps the crystals small. A warm base churned straight away turns coarse and grainy. Resting overnight also lets the flavours deepen and the mixture hydrate, which gives a noticeably smoother scoop.

For an eggless custard, cornflour does the thickening instead of yolks: whisk a tablespoon or two into cold milk, then cook it with the cream and sugar until it thickens and just bubbles, stirring so it does not catch. The result is a little less rich than a yolk custard but far more forgiving, with no risk of scrambling, and it is the backbone of most Indian-style and vegetarian ice creams. A pinch of salt in any base sharpens the flavour and stops it tasting flat or merely sweet.

No-churn ice cream skips the custard and the machine entirely, and the magic is in the structure. Whip cold double cream to soft peaks so you fold air in, then fold in sweetened condensed milk, which is loaded with sugar and milk solids that keep the mix soft and stop big ice crystals forming. That sugar is doing the same job an ice cream machine usually does — lowering the freezing point so the mixture stays scoopable straight from the freezer rather than setting like a brick.

Fold gently and stop the moment it is combined, because overmixing knocks out the air you just whipped in and gives a denser, heavier scoop. Flavour it however you like — a swirl of melted chocolate, crushed cookies, fruit purée, coffee or salted caramel rippled through — and add solid mix-ins after the base is in the tin so they do not sink. Press a sheet of cling film or baking paper directly onto the surface before freezing to keep ice from forming on top.

If you have no condensed milk, you can still cheat a churn: freeze the sweetened cream mixture in a shallow tray and beat it hard with a fork or whisk every 30 to 45 minutes for the first few hours, breaking up crystals as they form. It is more work, but that repeated beating mimics churning and keeps the texture smooth. Either way, freeze the mixture in a shallow, wide container rather than a deep one, since it freezes faster and more evenly with more surface area exposed to the cold.

Fruit ice creams and sorbets live or die on the fruit and the sugar balance. Use ripe, fragrant fruit and taste the mix before freezing, because cold dulls sweetness — a purée that tastes perfect at room temperature will seem flat once frozen, so it should taste slightly too sweet going in. For sorbets, sugar is structural as well as flavour: too little and you get an icy block, too much and it never sets firm. A good rule is roughly one part sugar to four parts fruit purée, adjusted to the fruit.

For mango, strawberry and banana ice creams, blending the fruit with cream or condensed milk gives a soft, creamy scoop, while a pure-fruit-and-water sorbet stays lighter and dairy-free. A spoon of glucose or a squeeze of lemon helps sorbets stay smooth and stops them crystallising, and freezing the purée fast in a shallow tray keeps the texture fine. Frozen banana is a cheat ingredient in its own right — blended on its own it whips into a soft-serve with no churning, sugar or cream needed at all.

Kulfi works on the opposite principle to airy ice cream: it is meant to be dense and fudgy, not light. Traditionally the milk is simmered down for a long time until it thickens and the milk solids concentrate, which is exactly what gives kulfi its characteristic chew and rich, almost caramelised flavour. Because it is not churned, no air is whipped in, so it freezes harder and slower than ice cream. Pour it into small moulds or matka pots, freeze until solid, and flavour it the classic way with cardamom, saffron and chopped pistachios.