Gemma’s 5 Pro Chef Secrets to the Easiest Homemade Ice Cream

With over 15 years experience as a professional chef, I've definitely learned a thing or two along the way. Here are my top five pro chef secrets for the easiest homemade ice cream. So my ice cream is pretty famous online with tens of millions of views. It's my two ingredient, no ice cream machine needed, ice cream. The recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com. Okay, let's start out with our first secret. So first things first, really important, what type of cream do you use? So you want to use fresh cream from a cow that has a high fat content, something around 38% or even higher than that. Now the reason that you need that is because cream with high fat content whips up really well and holds stiff peaks. So it's perfect for this recipe. You can find the fat content written on your carton of cream. In America, we call this heavy whipping cream, but no matter where you are in the world, read the carton. So secret number two, using an electric stand mixer or an electric hand mixer, whip up your cream until soft peaks form. Now it's really important at this stage, you only get it to soft peaks and not stiff peaks because what can happen is you could end up curdling your ice cream. So there you go. This took me around three to four minutes or so. Now come here to me because I want you to see this texture. So there you go. This is what soft peaks look like in the business. We call this billowy, which means it's really light and soft. It holds a little bit of a shape, but it's not really stiff. This is perfect. So number three, condensed milk. There is no substitute for condensed milk in this recipe. It's a key ingredient and it's actually what makes your ice cream scoopable. So you have to have it in there. You can, however, use fat free, maybe reduced sugar. Also, if you can't buy it in stores, you can really easily make it yourself. I have a recipe on biggerbolderbaking.com. Another thing is make sure it's really lovely and cold before you add it into your whipped cream. Okay, so secret number four, once your condensed milk is in there, now you can whip it up to stiff peaks. So you want to put it on a high speed and whip it up for a few minutes until it gets nice and firm. Okay, so let me recap. First time whipping the cream, soft peaks. Second time whipping the cream, stiff peaks. You want to make sure that they're at the right texture. Otherwise you might over whip it and you'll curdle your ice cream. So there you go. As you can see, it's firmer than before and it's holding more of a shape and more of a ripple. This is the texture that we want for the ice cream at this stage. Okay, so secret number five is a really good one. Add a little bit of vanilla extract into your ice cream base at the end and it will stop your ice cream from freezing really hard. Now I'll tell you why. This is alcohol based and it has a lower freezing point. So if you add a little bit in, it will keep your ice cream scoopable and kind of soft. So a little bit into your ice cream and you're good to go. So another way to explain this, if you think of a bottle of vodka in the freezer, it never actually freezes. It'll do the same thing for your ice cream. So that's it. Now you know how to successfully make my two ingredient ice cream. Once you know how to make this base, you can make all of these different flavors. Head over to BiggerBolderBaking.com for the ice cream recipe and all of the tips. And let me know in the comments below what other pro chef secrets you'd like to see me do.