Carrot Cake Ice Cream - No Churn! Mix, Freeze, and Eat - Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from FoodWishes.com with carrot cake ice cream. That's right, they say you can have your cake and eat it too. But you can have your cake and ice cream too, which is what we're about to do. And out of all the cakes that could be converted into an ice cream recipe, carrot cake might not be the first one that comes to mind. But after making and tasting this, I cannot imagine anything else coming out quite as well. And by the way, we don't need any ice cream machine. We are just going to mix, freeze, and eat. So with that, let's go ahead and get started by grating the star of the show, one large peeled carrot, or maybe a couple smaller carrots. But anyway, the point is to start the recipe, we're going to need about a cup and a quarter of freshly grated carrot. And what we'll do is add that to two tablespoons of butter that we've melted over medium heat in a saucepan. And then we will also toss in some brown sugar, plus a little bit of salt. Oh yeah, don't forget the salt. Okay, a little bit of that in ice cream makes everything taste better. And what we'll do is stir all this together, and we'll wait for this to heat through, and for those carrots to start giving up their liquid. And then once that happens, we'll simply continue to cook on medium, stirring occasionally for about four or five minutes, or until those pieces of carrot just get tender, and a good amount of that moisture has been evaporated. And once all that happens, it's probably going to look something like this. And once it does, we'll stop and add the last two ingredients for this component, which are some ground cinnamon, plus its good friend, ground ginger. And what we'll do is stir those in, and cook this for another minute, at which point we can turn off the heat, because we're done. We will simply let that cool down to room temp, while we move on to make the base of this no-churn ice cream, which believe it or not is going to start with some room temperature cream cheese, which of course in the form of frosting is a key component in carrot cake. And then to that we will add a little bit of pure real vanilla extract, plus one 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, a product I almost never use, but when it comes to no-churn ice cream, I think it really is kind of a key ingredient. So we'll go ahead and transfer that in, at which point we'll grab a whisk, and mix this until it's smooth. And I know that's not a whisk, that's a spatula, well actually technically a spoonula, but anyway that's what I started mixing this with. And about 20 seconds later, I thought to myself, man I really wish this was a whisk. So I stopped and switched, and the whisk ended up being a much much better choice. And I should mention, if your cheese is fairly soft, you should be able to mix this very smooth. But if you do happen to have a few little tiny chunks of cream cheese here and there, for something called carrot cake ice cream, I don't think that would be the worst thing ever. But anyway, no matter how smooth you decide to mix this, once it is mixed, we'll go ahead and transfer in our now room temperature carrot mixture. And we'll mix that, and yes I went back to the spoonula. I kind of felt bad for the spoonula, plus that was the best tool for getting that carrot mixture out of the saucepan. And then very important, what we'll do once that's all combined, is transfer that into the fridge, so it's nice and cold, when we mix it into our final component, which will be some good old fashion whipped cream. So we'll go ahead and pour that into a mixing bowl, and we will start whisking. And we will keep whisking until we have what we call in the business, medium stiff peaks. And as you might know, when you whip cream, you want it to be very very cold. And the reason is that cold cream whips up way faster, and way easier than warm cream. And like I said, we want to keep whisking this until we have medium stiff peaks. Right here I had like medium peaks, so I whisked that for a little bit more, until I had medium stiff peaks, which is where the point of that peak sort of holds its edge. So that is looking just about perfect. And once we're happy with our whipped cream, we can transfer in our carrot cream cheese mixture. And then we'll simply take our whisk, and mix this until it's combined. And no, you don't have to be very gentle. That whipped cream is going to be fine. So we will give that a quick mix, until just combined. At which point we'll stop and add the last ingredients, which would be some chopped walnuts, and chopped pecans. And we'll take a spatula and fold those in, until they're evenly combined. And of course if you wanted, you could just use one or the other. I mean you are after all the bugs bunny, of making sure your carrot cake ice cream is money. But since I'm basing this on our famous carrot cake recipe, I'm going to use both, like I did in that. And I really do enjoy the combo. But either way, once that batter has been nutted, it's ready to transfer into whatever container we're going to freeze it in. And pro tip, make sure that's been in the freezer before you do this. Right, you see all that beautiful frostiness? That's what a pre-frozen container looks like. And then once that's transferred in, I like to cover this in plastic, and press that down right onto the surface. So we have zero chance of any oxidation, or any crystallization on the top. And then once we have that surface sealed, we'll go ahead and pop on the lid, and we'll transfer this into the freezer until it's frozen solid, for at least four or five hours, or preferably overnight, which is what I did. And then the next day I pulled that out, and pulled off the lid and plastic. And while I think that color is very attractive, as you can see as I scrape a little bit off the top of the spoon, the real beauty lies beneath the surface. Since as you dig into this stuff, you're going to see all those beautiful bits of orange carrot. So besides being super delicious, I think this ice cream is absolutely gorgeous. And now that we've covered the appearance, let's move on to the taste and texture, which I think really are extraordinary. Okay, this really does taste exactly like carrot cake, including the flavor profile of a cream cheese frosting. And I would have been perfectly happy eating this out of the container. But as you know, I gotta take a few pictures. So I scooped some into a cup, and did just that, and then grabbed a spoon and dug in. And you're probably thinking, sure it looks good, and I bet it tastes good, but without using an ice cream maker, I bet the texture's not that great. Well, my friends, it is great. Really, really great. All right, what we have here is something with a very smooth, very creamy mouthfeel, with a little bit of very pleasant chewiness, with absolutely no crystallization. All right, one of the fatal flaws to cheater ice cream methods, because the ice cream is not churned as it freezes, is that you end up getting ice crystals, which kind of wrecks that smooth, creamy, luxurious mouthfeel. Well here, thanks to that whipped cream and that sweetened condensed milk, I'm happy to report we have none of those issues. So if you've never made ice cream because you don't have an ice cream maker, now you can. Because with this method, you're the ice cream maker. So above and beyond the great appearance, texture, and flavor, I really love this easy and fast technique. Okay, we mix, we freeze, and we eat. But anyway, that's it. What we're calling carrot cake ice cream. Whenever Easter is coming up, I'm always looking for recipes that use carrots. And yes, of course this counts as a serving of vegetables. But whether you serve this for Easter, or in the middle of summer, for a major change of pace, if you like carrot cake and ice cream, you will absolutely love this. Which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon. So please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info, as usual. And as always, enjoy!