French Vanilla Ice Cream (5 Ingredients)

Anyone who loves ice cream is going to love this recipe. With a handful of ingredients and a little bit of time, this recipe will teach you how to create a creamy homemade ice cream. 

This recipe is unique because of the high ratio of egg yolks, just like the classic French-style custard ice cream. 

This recipe can be made using an ice cream machine from any of the major brands such as Breville, Cuisinart, KitchenAid, Pampered Chef, or Whynter.

Don't forget to check out my other favorite 30+ ice cream maker recipes.

What You'll Learn In This Recipe

French vanilla bean ice cream is unique because it is a custard-base ice cream. Custard-base ice creams use significantly more egg yolks than traditional ice cream, or Philadelphia-style ice cream which doesn’t use any eggs at all. 

Because custard ice creams use egg products, the mixture has to be heated before churning and there are a few more steps involved in the ice cream making process. 

So, why add egg yolks? The end result is a much richer and creamier ice cream and is definitely worth the extra effort involved.

Whole Milk: For this ice cream recipe, it's crucial that you’re using whole milk and not 2% or skim or any other variety of milk. The fat percentage in whole milk is what gives this ice cream the creaminess we desire. Additionally, milk helps add water to the ice cream mix, which helps the ice cream properly freeze when added to the machine. 

Heavy Cream: Cream has an even higher percentage of butterfat than milk. The reason we use both whole milk and heavy cream is that the balance of butterfat will give us the perfect creaminess without it having a fatty, greasy mouthfeel. 

Egg Yolks: This is the ingredient that makes this type ice cream unique. The high percentage of egg yolks and cream is important for gaining the proper French-style consistency. Eggs help provide a silky, rich texture to the ice cream. 

All custard recipes use eggs. Because of this, the base must be heated to kill off any potentially harmful bacteria found in the raw eggs. 

Granulated Sugar: To sweeten our ice cream, we have to add sugar to it. Beyond being a sweetening agent, sugar also helps lower the freezing point of the mixture which keeps the ice cream from turning into an ice block. 

Vanilla extract: This is added for the vanilla flavor that takes the recipe from a generic French custard to French vanilla ice cream. If you desire, you can also use vanilla bean paste if you want to see pretty vanilla bean specks in your ice cream. 

Mix-Ins: Mix-ins are optional, but they are definitely a fun way of changing up the flavor of your ice cream. For mix-ins, simply add them in in the last few minutes of the churning process. Be sure the mix-ins are bite-sized so eat in your ice cream. 

Here are some of my personal favorite mix-in ingredients:

• Sprinkles
• Oreo cookies
• Reese's
• Twix
• Brownies
• Cookie dough
• Caramel
• Fudge
• Chocolate chips
• Fresh fruit or dried fruit
• Caramel M&Ms
• Peanut Butter
• Nuts

Let's walk through how to make this delicious French vanilla ice cream recipe. I'll show you some of my favorite tips along the way to ensure your ice cream turns out perfectly the first time.

1. Before mixing anything, fill a large bowl with ice to use later as an ice bath. Place another empty bowl on top of the ice and set this aside. 

Ideally, use either glass or stainless steel bowls for this, because these will cool much better than plastic bowls. 

To begin making your ice cream, add the heavy cream, milk, and vanilla into a heavy-bottom saucepan. On medium heat, slowly heat this mixture until you start to see small bubbles forming around the edges and steam rising from the mixture. This typically takes about 8 minutes, but be sure to keep an eye on the mixture, so it does not boil. 

2. While you let the cream and milk mixture heat, mix your egg yolks and granulated sugar. 

3. After the cream and milk mixture is steaming, grab a whisk and a ladle. Gradually ladle the hot mixture into the egg yolks and sugar.

4. Be sure to whisk vigorously after adding the hot cream and milk. 

Known as tempering, this technique slowly mixes two things at two different temperatures to ensure the cold mix is not shocked by adding all the heat in at once. This technique is especially important with eggs, if you shock an egg mixture you’ll end up with scrambled eggs instead of a nice velvety egg custard. 

5. Once your eggs are tempered, add them back into the saucepan and continue to whisk. Keep whisking until the whole mixture is thoroughly combined and homogenized (mixed together).  

6. With the mixture combined properly, keep cooking it while whisking, until the ice cream base reaches 180°F (82°C) on an instant-read thermometer. 

7. Once you hit that temperature, place a bowl covered with a fine mesh strainer into your ice bath from earlier. Strain the ice cream base to catch any large chunks of eggs that may have gotten scrambled while you were in the tempering process. 

8. Leave your ice cream base in the ice bath until it stops steaming.

Then, remove the top bowl from the ice, cover it with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 4 - 8 hours, or up to overnight. The temperature of your French vanilla ice cream base should reach somewhere between 40°F - 42°F (4.4°C - 5.6°C). 

Be sure you do not rush this step, or the ice cream base will not freeze properly when churning in the ice cream machine.

9. Now, for the home stretch of your ice cream-making process. Pour your properly cooled mixture into an ice cream machine (I use a Whynter machine with a built-in compressor).

If you have an ice cream machine with a bowl that needs to pre-freeze, place the bowl in the freezer 24 hours before you plan to churn.

It is very important that you do not fill the ice cream base all the way to the top of the ice cream maker. If you fill the ice cream maker too high, as the air incorporates into the mix, your ice cream will overflow. In the world of ice cream and frozen desserts, the process I just described is known as overrun. 

10. Churn according to the directions of the machine's manufacturer. For my machine, it takes about 20-25 minutes to fully churn. When done, the ice cream should have the consistency of soft serve. 

You can eat this right away or place it in the freezer to harden for a couple of hours if you don't want the soft serve consistency. 

To store your ice cream, keep it in an airtight container in the freezer where it will last for 2-3 weeks.