John Myers
Soft ice cream is creamy, fluffy – and wonderfully reminiscent of childhood and holidays. We explain how you can make the creamy ice cream specialty yourself at home, without any chemicals or an ice cream machine.
The soft, light, and airy soft ice cream is great refreshment on hot summer days. Or just a delicious dessert. The special thing about soft ice cream is its creamy consistency – otherwise soft ice cream is normal ice cream. Soft ice cream consists of a combination of cream, milk, sugar, or honey and optionally egg. In addition – depending on the variety – fine chocolate or sweet fruits.
Soft ice cream gets its airy consistency through careful frothing. What is almost a must with soft ice cream: sprinkles or chocolate chips as a topping and the characteristic spiral shape that tapers to a point at the top. It doesn’t matter which type you prefer: soft ice cream always tastes like a holiday!
You can easily bring this feeling home and make soft ice cream yourself – even if you don’t have an ice cream maker. Here we explain how it works.
Making soft ice cream yourself has many advantages
You know exactly what’s in the ice.
You can put together your favorite flavor yourself.
You can vary the amount of sugar.
And you are on the safe side when it comes to the formation of germs. Because when you buy soft ice cream, the creamy ice cream comes from special soft ice cream machines. These machines have a reputation for turning into potentially dangerous germ killers if poorly maintained. This also has to do with the fact that soft ice cream is not prepared as cold as ordinary ice cream (this leads to the intense taste experience typical of soft ice cream), so pathogens can develop more easily here. Even if the Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL) declares that soft ice cream that is bought is usually better than its reputation.
Make soft ice cream yourself: vanilla, chocolate or strawberry
Traditionally, soft ice cream comes in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors. But of course you can get creative with the ice cream production as you please and create your personal favorite variety.
Recipe for homemade vanilla soft serve ice cream
Ingredients:
500 ml liquid cream
80 g honey or powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 vanilla bean
1 pinch of salt
Preparation:
Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the pulp.
Put the cream and honey in a saucepan, bring to a boil and stir until the honey has dissolved. Then stir in the vanilla pulp and allow the mixture to cool. When the mixture is at room temperature, put it in the fridge for a few hours.
Separate the eggs. Add the egg yolk to the cream and honey mixture, whip the egg whites with the salt and stir in.
Mix the mass with the hand mixer to a soft cream.
Place the mixture in the freezer until the soft serve is the desired consistency. Stir the mixture every 30 minutes.
Make soft ice cream yourself without eggs
Ingredients:
300 ml liquid cream
200 ml sweetened condensed milk
2 packets of vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
Preparation:
Mix together the condensed milk and vanilla sugar.
Whip the cream with salt until stiff.
Mix the ingredients together and sweeten with powdered sugar if necessary.
Place the mixture in the freezer until the soft serve is the desired consistency. Stir the mixture every 30 minutes.
Make your own chocolate soft ice cream
Ingredients:
200ml milk
300 ml whipping cream
50 g cocoa powder, unsweetened
100 g powdered sugar
1 packet of vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
Preparation:
Put the milk, cocoa powder, the vanilla sugar and the powdered sugar in a bowl.
Mix with a hand mixer until the mixture is nice and fluffy.
In a second bowl, whip the cream with the salt until stiff. Then mix with the milk-cocoa mixture and beat with the hand mixer until fluffy.
Place the mixture in the freezer until the soft serve is the desired consistency. Stir the mixture every 30 minutes.
Tips & tricks for DIY soft ice cream
All ingredients should be as cold as possible when you start preparing them.
With the help of a piping bag, the ice cream gets the typical spiral shape.
Last but not least, you can decorate your soft ice cream. Chocolate, brittle, or nut crumbles as well as pieces of fruit are suitable as a topping.
Soft ice cream tastes best fresh. If you have leftovers, you can freeze them without any problems – but it can happen that the ice cream is no longer as soft and fluffy.
