Ice Cream Dream

For thanksgiving I decided to accompany my pumpkin pie, I wanted ricotta ice-cream, so I set about testing a recipe. Having made ice-cream before successfully sans ice-cream maker once before I thought that second time round would be child’s play.

Obviously I had beginners luck, or my freestyle recipe didn't work so well!

Ricotta Ice Cream

4 cups whole milk ricotta

2 cups cream

1 cup sugar syrup

1 cup water


To make the sugar syrup

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

In a saucepan, combined sugar and water, bring the boil, then simmer until sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

In a large bowl combined ricotta and cream and mix well.
Add cooled syrup and water and mix until smooth and creamy.

Place bowl in freezer and stir every 1-2 hours until frozen (this can take up to 10 hours depending on freezer temperature).

I blended it all together and placed in the freezer and stirred at hourly intervals. it was tasting and looking great until… I slept for 8 hours and let it freeze without stirring it, which resulted in a solid dairy ice-cube in the morning.

After a bit of researching I found out that in order for the ice-cream to freeze properly, with or without an ice-cream maker, everything has to be really cold. The ice cream mixture first must also be cooled to room temperature and then chilled in a refrigerator for several hours before it is poured into the ice cream maker, or placed into the freezer.

Everything must be cooled because if not,  ice crystals form and you get a solid chunk of ice. Moving the mixture around while it is being frozen prevents ice crystals from forming, resulting in a creamy texture (which is why I should have started this in the morning rather than 9pm at night).

To rescue the ice-cream, I added 1 more cup of cream, let it melt a little and then re-blended it. Thankfully this worked - with lots of elbow grease and hand-whipping the ice-cream was smooth, creamy and delicious - the perfect accompaniment to the pumpkin pie.