This is an ice cream recipe I’ve turned to for over twenty years. Part of the draw is the simplicity. The other part is the flavor. It’s just five ingredients churned into billowy, vanilla flecked ice cream with no refined sugar. The only sweetener is honey, use your favorite, it comes through wonderfully direct.
Honey Ice Cream: the Inspiration
I’ve long enjoyed cooking from Patricia Wells’ cookbooks. Her recipes strike a perfect balance of reliability, simplicity of ingredients, and deliciousness. I started making this honey ice cream when I spotted it in The Paris Cookbook twenty-plus years ago. I liked to make it for friends served with these ginger cookies, and it never rotated out of my repertoire.
The method: The recipe couldn’t be simpler. Heat all your ingredients in a saucepan and let them steep for an hour. Chill the mixture, pour it into your ice cream maker and let it run until your ice cream is the consistency of the above picture. I used to use a little, freeze-ahead Krups ice cream maker (it worked well for years!) and eventually upgraded to a Breville Smart Scoop.
You *can* make this ice cream, even if you’ve never made ice cream before. It’s one of the simplest ice cream/gelato recipes I’ve come across – no eggs, no cornstarch, no thickening custards. It’s a great recipe to try if you want an easy way to break in a new ice cream maker.
Pro Tips
I’ve learned a number of things about this recipe over the years. Here are a few things to think about if you find yourself making it on repeat.
- Type of Honey: First, you can substantially change the personality of this ice cream by tweaking the honey you use. Patricia uses a deep, rust-toned heather honey from La Maison du Miel for her recipe. I’ve used everything from desert mesquite honey, and olive blossom honey, to (my current favorite) a deep amber buckwheat honey. The ice cream pictured here was made with buckwheat honey.
- In a hurry?: If you’re pinched for time, vanilla bean paste is what you need. Use 2 teaspoons of vanilla bean paste in place of the vanilla beans. This allows you to skip the steeping stage. Chill your mixture, then churn, and you’re good to go.
This ice cream is rich and sweet — just how rich or how sweet will depend in part on the type of honey you end up using. This isn’t the sort of ice-cream you are going to turn into a double-scoop cone. A tiny scoop or two with a crispy cookie is a nice way to end a meal.
If you’re interested in Patricia Wells, here are some links! Browse her books. Follow her on Instagram. Or, take a cooking class in France!
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