Decadent & Creamy Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe (Easy)

Let’s be clear: most of the time I buy ice cream. It’s a convenience issue. And when you have several local sources for ice cream made with high-quality ingredients it becomes a justifiable convenience. It is also hard to turn out homemade ice cream for a crowd of college kids, so most often purchasing ice cream makes sense. However, I love to serve my family homemade ice cream, so every now and again our wooden Oster ice cream maker is put to use. And while all the recipes I have tried have been good I have yet to find the one recipe- that is until recently.

Vanilla ice cream has many, many, many variations. Most of these recipes contain the same base ingredients of milk, cream, sugar, etc.- just in different amounts and variations. I have tried many of them including the ones with eggs which creates a custard-like ice cream. Nothing stood out to me, and I wanted an extra special and really easy basic vanilla to work with. With a basic vanilla ice cream recipe, you can add fruit, chocolate, cream cheese, etc. and come up with a whole new creation. However, a good vanilla ice cream recipe is an important base to start with.

Recently, I decided to take a different approach. A recipe idea came to me using sweetened condensed milk instead of sugar. Additionally, I decided to use a lot of heavy whipping cream (no milk!) as well as a full tablespoon of pure vanilla extract. This was going to be a high calorie experiment! Also added to the recipe was a touch of sea salt to enhance the sweetness. Basically, I just gave my salt grinder 4 twists and called it good. Don’t overdo the salt. When the finished ice cream was done it tasted like an amazing vanilla soft serve. It was creamy and cool decadence in a bowl. The whole family ate all of it, and my husband declared it the best ice cream ever. He now asks me to make it regularly. Hurray! The search for the basic vanilla ice cream recipe was over!

As I mentioned earlier, this is high-calorie and that’s why it’s so good. Swapping out ingredients will give you different results, so keep that in mind if you substitute ingredients to lower the calorie count. Also, using the sweetened condensed milk makes the ice cream even creamier and just as sweet as using regular sugar except you don’t have the bother of whisking in the sugar until it dissolves. There are no eggs to cook a special way, a feature of many vanilla ice cream recipes. This is an extremely easy treat to make. Keep reading below for the recipe.

Decadent & Creamy Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe

2 cups of heavy whipping cream

2 cups of regular whipping cream

1 can sweetened condensed milk

A tiny pinch of sea salt

1 tbsp of good vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients well and process in ice cream maker according to instructions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker then see note below. Freeze when done. Serve with fruit, chocolate, etc. Enjoy!

Note: if you don’t have an ice cream maker, then I recommend freezing in a cover container and stirring periodically to develop an even consistency.

Oh so yummy!

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