Mint Ice Cream

A delicious copycat Shamrock Shake recipe starts with a very important ingredient. It demands the best mint ice cream out there, or the shake is going to disappoint.

Lucky for you, I have an incredible version of Mint Ice Cream that is amazing in shakes or in a sundae cup. Vintage cups preferred, of course.

The big secret to flavoring anything with a mint type of flavoring is two-fold:

• Use the appropriate flavoring (peppermint is not the same as spearmint is not the same as straight up MINT)
• Use a gentle hand when adding any sort of minty flavor. A drop too much and you’ve gone from refreshing to toothpaste. And nobody wants a toothpaste sundae.
• A drop of green color is enough to impart the idea of the flavor. I personally prefer a pastel look to my desserts as opposed to heavy color. But you can add more color if that suits your presentation better.

Ingredients for Mint Ice Cream:

Ice cream is truly one of those recipes that goes together with just few fresh ingredients. Fresh it is, but diet food it is not. You want to use full fat diary, because if you trade out the fat for water you get all ice and very little cream. Subbing 2% milk for whipping cream pretty much ruins the whole thing. So if you are counting calories or shunning fat, then this is not your recipe.

For the rest of us:

• Whipping Cream: the main component in the ice cream. Don’t skimp here and get the small creamery or organic version if you can.
• Half and half: freezes smoother than straight milk, but if you want to sub something, here is where you can trade for milk. But use full fat milk.
• Sweetened Condensed Milk: Supplies the sugar to the recipe
• Mint Extract: This is VERY specific. To have mint ice cream, you need mint flavoring. Peppermint or spearmint is different.
• Light Corn Syrup: an old secret ingredient that keeps ice cream softer even while it’s frozen.

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There are two basic types of recipes:

• French style ice cream: the base is a cooked custard with egg yolks and extra rich
• Philly style ice cream: the base is not cooked and doesn’t include any eggs

Generally, I love to make Philly style ice cream because it doesn’t require cooking. The ingredients are simply poured into a large bowl and thoroughly mixed. A really good whisking is acceptable here, but I always recommend a mixer if you one available.

Take my advice. If you want to start making your own ice cream, invest in an ice cream churn.

Honestly, just get the churn. Mine is the basic model where the core gets put into the freezer over night. So I do do have to plan ahead a little. Or just keep it in the freezer and then it’s always cold enough to churn ice cream.

If you still go forward with the no churn style of ice cream, then understand it’s not going to be as smooth and creamy. It’s just not. I don’t care what other recipe blogs tell you. They are lying. Why? Maybe so you feel better about your choice to not buy the ice cream churn. I don’t really know why professional recipe developers push the lie that no churn ice cream is the same as churned. Um. No. It’s not even close.

In fairness, it’s still good. But it’s hard as a brick so when you take it from the freezer, let the ice cream sit on the counter for a good 20 minutes before you try scooping. It’s like scooping a block of ice otherwise. Once it softens, it does scoop pretty nice, as evidenced in the photos I took for this post. But it’s not the same texture as churned ice cream.

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