The No-Fuss Shortcut For Making Custard Ice Cream At Home

Whether it's a hot summer day or a chilly autumn evening, nothing hits quite like homemade ice cream. DIY recipes often taste fresher, and they allow you to experiment with interesting flavors and customize the recipe to your preferences. Though no-churn ice cream made with a frozen banana or sweetened condensed milk makes this process a breeze, custard is still king when it comes to superior texture and flavor.

The defining factor when it comes to custard versus soft serve, frozen yogurt, and other cold, creamy treats is the addition of egg yolks. Eggs are fairly high in fat and when tempered with milk and sugar, they lend custard ice cream its dense, luscious-yet-fluffy texture. The fat also helps intensify the other flavors, similar to the way salt makes desserts taste sweeter. However, making custard (a.k.a. crème anglaise) at home is a notoriously finicky process, and few people are willing to risk wasting ingredients — especially multiple pricey eggs.

Fortunately, there's a shortcut that simplifies the process of making custard for ice cream. Rather than creaming egg yolks and sugar together and heating the milk separately, the idea is to whisk all three ingredients together until they're a pale yellow color. You can then warm them very slowly in a regular saucepan over low heat. As long as you whisk constantly to distribute heat and aerate the mixture, it should come together as a velvety crème anglaise — without needing any special equipment other than a whisk.

You might even prefer this all-in-one method for making crème anglaise because it may be easier for most home cooks to master. There's also no need to temper your eggs and risk instantly scrambling them — something that's easier to do with a double-boiler method. If the thought of slow-cooking eggs to a creamy consistency still makes you nervous, you can monitor your progress with a candy thermometer.

Once your mixture reaches about 175 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit and easily coats the back of a spoon, it's ready to go. The key here is to stop the cooking process as quickly as possible, which you can do by scooping the custard into a chilled bowl, preferably over an ice bath. Continuously whisking the custard will also help it cool faster, as it releases heat. Along with slowly heating the mixture, this process helps keep the eggs from scrambling. If the crème anglaise curdles, you may have to start over.

Once it's completely chilled, your custard is ready to make into ice cream. Though the simplest way to do this is with an ice cream maker, there are many ways to make ice cream without a machine. The simplest method involves freezing your custard in ice cube trays and then blending the custard cubes together. Of course, no matter what option you choose, a good custard base will nearly always produce rich, velvety, craveable ice cream.