Pavlovas always make for striking desserts at any table, but they do need a long time to dry out in the oven and can crack all too easily. If you need a more reliable option in a hurry, then why not try some personal pavlovas? This recipe features a vanilla flavoured meringue, prosecco whipped cream and is topped with a variety of berries, making it ideal as a light summer dessert!
Menu
Creating Ice Cream
SOFT.
SERVE.
ICE CREAM!
SOFT.SERVE.ICE CREAM!
For those moments when your fancying a Mr Whippy, but the ice cream van isn’t around, you’ll be grateful that you took a look at this article!
Soft serve ice cream is incredibly easy to make and customize, allowing you to have gorgeously smooth ice cream whenever you fancy!
The biggest challenge will be making room in the freezer to store it all!
Soft serve ice cream is incredibly easy to make and customize, allowing you to have gorgeously smooth ice cream whenever you fancy!
The biggest challenge will be making room in the freezer to store it all!
In a hurry? Then here’s your recipe!
If you like to see some more tips and tricks, then scroll away for a bit of light reading!
No-Churn Soft Serve Ice Cream
Course: DessertDifficulty: EasyServings
450
mlPrep time
10
minutesFreezing time
6
hoursFancy a soft serve, Mr Whippy style ice cream, but the ice cream van has gone AWOL at the worst possible moment? Well, why not prepare this recipe and have an ice cream supply always in reserve!
Ingredients
200ml condensed milk
250ml double cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Directions
- Pour the condensed milk into a large mixing bowl, add the vanilla extract and whisk them together to combine.
- In a separate mixing bowl, whisk the double cream to stiff peak consistency.
- Fold the double cream into the condensed milk mixture until it is fully combined, at which point the mixture should be light and smooth.
- Pour the mixture into freezer-safe containers and freeze for at least 6 hours, or until set. If you can leave it overnight, even better!
Step 1: Super Base!
The base of your ice cream is a traditional store cupboard staple: condensed milk! Though you don't see it spoken of as much nowadays, your parents may have long lost memories of buying this to create fudge or Scottish tablet, for adding to coffee or pouring over fruit for pudding. My Dad has a particularly vivid recollection of the time he bought some from the shop as a child, resulting in an unfortunate mispronunciation of Fussells condensed milk!
But I say, it's time to stock up once again! I've already produced a guide on creating fudge from condensed milk and it turns out the properties that make it great for turning out fudge (namely being a viscous source of milk fats while also being low in water content) also make it a brilliant base for ice cream!
To make approximately 450ml of ice cream, pop 200ml of condensed milk into a mixing bowl, or if you've really got a hankering for creamy goodness, double it up by adding the whole tin (which should be 397ml).
Step 2: What's your flavour?
At this point, you can start getting really creative! To the condensed milk, you can add any flavourings you fancy that wouldn't be able to smoothly dissolve into double cream. For example, if you are making a fruity ice cream, I'd suggest adding a jam or curd at this point, since that wouldn't smoothly combine/dissolve into the double cream we'll be adding later (I know, spoilers!) and would stay a bit lumpy once you've whipped the cream. However, because condensed milk is that much thicker than cream, you can smoothly combine jams and curds into it, allowing you to come up with all sorts of berry or citrus creations!
You don't need to go crazy with a whisk here either; just lightly whisk the ingredients into the condensed milk until everything is combined and smooth.
Please bear in mind though that you’ll want to avoid adding anything to your ice cream base with significant water content, such as fruit juices. The reason our ice cream ends up so smooth is due to the fact that it has a high fat content, but minimal water content, which firms up well when frozen without losing its texture. On the other hand, water (obviously) freezes, so any watery ingredients will crystallise in your ice cream, making it icy. If you’d like to make a sorbet, then maximising icyness would be ideal, but you’d need a different recipe for that! 😅
If you really want to add a bit of fruit juice or alcohol to the mix, then perhaps try creating a syrup from it by reducing it down with some sugar in a saucepan. Reduce it to be as thick as possible, chill it, then whisk that in to the condensed milk. You’ll still need to be sparing, so you don’t make the ice cream base too runny, but with any luck you’ll have boiled off enough water to achieve the desired texture!
If you really want to add a bit of fruit juice or alcohol to the mix, then perhaps try creating a syrup from it by reducing it down with some sugar in a saucepan. Reduce it to be as thick as possible, chill it, then whisk that in to the condensed milk. You’ll still need to be sparing, so you don’t make the ice cream base too runny, but with any luck you’ll have boiled off enough water to achieve the desired texture!
Step 3: Tell me, what's your flavour?
Now that you have your thick ice cream base, you need to lighten things up a bit! That's where the double cream comes in! By whisking double cream to stiff peaks and folding it into the condensed milk mixture, we will incorporate a lot of air, resulting in a voluminous ice cream "batter' that remains soft enough to scoop. If you are working with 200ml of condensed milk, then you'll need 250ml of double cream. Likewise, if you are using the full 397g tin of condensed milk, you'll need 500ml of double cream (for maths fans, that's a ratio of 4:5 parts condensed milk to double cream).
Before you get to whippin', however, you have another chance to add some more flavours! Chocolate is a particularly good choice here, as you can melt the chocolate into the cream before you whip it to create a ganache. Once chilled, you can then whip that ganache to stiff peaks and use it as you would the plain double cream! Having said that, anything that will dissolve into the double cream, such as extracts, essences and coffee, can be added straight into the cream before whisking and will naturally be evenly distributed as you whip it up!
As explained in the previous section regarding adding flavours, just make sure you don't add anything with too much water content. Not only will this make your ice cream more icy than creamy, but ingredients with a high water content will separate and seep from your cream!
Step 4: Cream Genie!
Regardless of what you have added to the cream, you'll want to whisk it up to stiff peaks stage, or perhaps even a little bit over, before folding it into the condensed milk mixture. Whipping the cream to this stage means that we have trapped plenty of air within, which we can transfer to our glorious ice cream! It will also thicken up the cream enough that it can be incorporated into the mix without thinning it down too much, which would result in a runny ice cream that will melt extremely quickly!
Finally, once the cream has been folded through until fully combined, you get to begin freezing! Pour your ice cream into some freezer-safe tubs and pop them in the freezer! Amazon has a good range of round, cardboard based ice cream tubs should you want to move in on Ben and Jerry’s gig!
If you have added all of the ingredients you’d like in your ice cream, leave them in the freezer to set for at least 6 hours, or preferably overnight if you can wait that long!
On the other hand, if you’d like to add some extras to the mix, such as chocolate chips, nuts or meringue pieces, place the ice cream in the freezer for around 2 hours, before stirring through said extras. By this time, your ice cream should still be soft enough to stir, but thick enough to prevent all of your added ingredients from sinking straight to the bottom! After this, you can return the tubs to the freezer to finish setting for the full 6 hours or so.
Once you’ve managed to wait out the freezing process, you can tuck in! Depending on what you have added to your ice cream, you may be able to scoop and pipe it straight out of the freezer. However, if it is a little too firm to do so, leave the ice cream out at room temperature for a short time to warm up slightly before retrying and enjoying!
I hope you enjoy this recipe and have fun coming up with your own flavours!
If you’re social media savvy, feel free tag me on Instagram at @toofarfletched with your creations!
-Tom 
Comments
Tom
Hi! Thanks for stopping by!
I set up this site to share with you everything I love about baking, so hopefully there’ll be something here you enjoy too!
If you’d like to get in touch, feel free to use the links below!
I set up this site to share with you everything I love about baking, so hopefully there’ll be something here you enjoy too!
If you’d like to get in touch, feel free to use the links below!
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