Making coffee ice cream at home without a fancy ice cream machine is actually super simple. In the same way that an iced latte brings that hit of coffee coldness on a hot summer's day, a coffee ice cream does the same but homemade coffee ice cream will impress your friends far more. 

You don’t need much in the way of equipment and it can be made with as little as 4 ingredients.

As the title suggests this recipe requires no heavy or expensive ice cream machine as we just utilise the freezer (who would have thought the freezer might be used to freeze something). 

 

Pro-Tip: 

In general ice cream making sounds daunting and up until recently we would have said it was too much effort or too difficult to even bother. However, upon researching the topic ourselves and then trying a couple of different approaches we realised it's super easy (oh and it’s tasty as...). 

So on to the details...

Equipment

• Set of Food Scales

Not much to be said on these, they don’t need to be fancy coffee scales just standard run of the mill food scales. If you don’t already have a set we recommend the following options:

• Pyrex dish with Lid (2.5 litre Capacity)

We use 2.5 litre capacity because this gives us two options here. We either 

1. have a half full dish which will mean the air in the open space will help it get frozen quicker 
2. We can double our recipe and still easily use the same dish

Ultimately it doesn’t matter too much size wise once it’s above 1.2 litres you should be fine, however the key is making sure it has a lid!

We use these ones as seen in the pictures 

Pyrex Glass Dish Green Lids (Pack of 2) - Around £15

• Big mixing bowl & Hand mixer or Stand Mixer with Bowl

Either option works here. We used a stand mixer as that is what we had at home but a large bowl and hand mixer will work great too.

For reference this is the mixer we are using in the images: 

Kenwood kMix Black Stand Mixer - RRP £370 often on sale at £280

• Spatula or Large spoon 

Spatula is best here to scrap the bowl but any large spoon would work

Honestly Ikea is probably best for this but if you can’t get to an Ikea and need one quickly why not give this a go

Black Silicone Heat Resistant Non Stick Spatulas (Set of 3) - Around £6.50

So now you have all the gear ready we move on to the ingredients required. 

 Ingredients: 

• 4 tbsp of Fresh ground coffee Espresso or Strong Cold Brewliqueur 
• 290g condensed milk 
• 480g of double cream
• Two teaspoons of vanilla extract

Method: 

1. Whisk on a medium to high speed the double cream (480g) until it start to form soft peaks

• Be careful not to over-whisk
• Add condensed milk (290g) & vanilla extract (2 Tsp) then mix on a slow speed until incorporated

(notice the colour change to the top of the mix before it's incorporated by adding those two ingredients)

• Finally add the coffee or coffee liqueur (4 Tbsp)
• Coffee should be brewed and cooled fully before being added to mixture 

• Empty Bowl into the pyrex dish, Cover with lid and freeze until frozen 

 This is what you will end up with after its been frozen: 

You will see from the image i have done half and half. Once half of the ice have chocolate chips in and the other is plain coffee.

Pro-Tip: 

If using fresh coffee beans then ensure you brew this fully, we recommend espresso.

Checkout our blog article on how to get espresso without an espresso machine if you are wondering. 

Anyway once you have your coffee in a mug we suggest submerging the bottom ½ of the mug in cold water to help speed up the cool down process of the coffee. This is better than adding ice cubes as it won’t dilute the coffee.

Cheeky Flavour Twist: 

We suggest one of the best twists on this recipe is to add Chocolate chunks/chips once you’ve finished mixing and just before you scoop the mixture out into the pyrex dish. Totally optional of course but highly recommended.

Pro Tip: 

One way to speed up the freezing process of the ice cream itself is to freeze the empty pyrex dish beforehand. Simply stick it in the freezer the night before you plan to make it. 

This will help the freezing process kick in once the ingredients are ready to go (this isn’t essential though).

We estimate freeze times to be around the below: 

If you pre-freeze the dish 2-4 hours 

No pre-freezing the dish: 4-7 hours

 

Tried our recipe? Let us know how it went