Homemade Candy Cane Peppermint Ice Cream

By Mrs. Accountability on November 10th, 2009

I love my Donvier Ice Cream Maker so much, it is so handy. I use it, and it’s still halfway frozen when I rinse it out and put it right back into the freezer until the urge strikes me to have ice cream. I’ve been wanting to make this flavor since I made the Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream.

Now just for a minute, let me tell you why owning one of these handy little babies is frugal. You can make all natural ice cream without having to pay exorbitant fees for the name brands. You put in the ingredients, so you know what’s in there. I have such fond memories of making ice cream with my children and my sister and nieces and nephews. It is really a fun thing for families to do together. And it’s so simple! You don’t have to keep rock salt or ice cubes on hand. My sister had six children and she had two inserts. So we could make two flavors at the same time, and feed all ten of us.

For this flavor, I decided to start with a pudding base. It is my experience when you aren’t using full cream to make ice cream, it is better to use a thicker base. You can achieve this with either a fruit (or vegetable) base, like I did with the Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream, or pudding.

Here are the ingredients I used:

2 egg yolks
3 T. soft as silk flour
1 T. vanilla
1/2 c. honey
3 cups whole milk
1/4 t. salt
3 candy canes

I put the egg yolks into a saucepan, with the 3 tablespoons of flour. I normally use cornstarch to make pudding, but we were out, so I improvised and used Soft as Silk flour. Mixed thoroughly and then I added the vanilla.

By the way, if you would prefer to use sugar, substitute 1 cup of sugar for the honey, and add another half cup of milk. Because the candy canes add quite a bit of sweetness, the pudding before adding the candy canes will taste less sweet than ice cream normally does.

Egg yolks, flour and vanilla

Add the milk, honey and salt to the egg mixture. Whisk frequently while heating over medium heat. Once the mixture began to boil I let it go another 20-30 seconds, then turned off the heat and removed from the element.

It was so delicious at that point, after all it was basically vanilla pudding. And I love warm vanilla pudding.

I let the pudding cool and after a while placed it in the freezer still in the pan to let it cool down more quickly.

While it was cooling, I put the candy canes into my Magic Bullet blender using the flat blade I blended up the candy canes until they were pretty fine, but still had a few chunks left.

Candy Canes

Candy Canes Blended

After the pudding was completely chilled, I poured it into the frozen insert and then dumped in the crushed candy canes. By the way, these are candy canes that I bought from Target last January during the 90% off sale, so if I remember correctly it was 9 cents for a box of 12 canes.

Crushed Candy Canes top the ice cream

Candy Cane Ice Cream in the Donvier Ice Cream Maker

Mmmm! Doesn’t that look delicious!? And here it is after I let it freeze for a few hours. The pudding gives the ice cream a very nice smooth feel to it. I think using the Soft As Silk flour really helped, too.

Candy Cane Ice Cream

Here is some nutritional information courtesy of About.com. However, this site did not recognize candy canes, so the calorie count will actually be 188 calories per 1/2 cup serving. The sugars will also increase.