Christina Tosi’s cereal milk is a phenomenon itself. Take that deliciously flavored bevvie and turn it into ice cream and you’ve just leveled up your dessert game. This eggless ice cream is made with gelatin instead, for the truest flavor and a seriously lush texture.
Cereal milk ice cream shouldn’t taste eggy, so we don’t put eggs in it. We outsmart the traditional approach to making ice cream, which includes tempering eggs and making an egg-milk mixture, called an anglaise, that thickens as it heats, by using gelatin as an ice-cream stabilizer. It thickens the ice cream, gives it great body and mouthfeel free of crystallization, and keeps it from melting too quickly when you are scooping a sundae or from freezing too hard once stored in the freezer overnight.
Wait to spin your ice cream until you are ready to serve it. There is nothing quite like freshly spun–frozen–ice cream. It’s the perfect temperature and consistency right out of the ice cream maker. It’s easy to scoop and it melts in your mouth just right. In the restaurant industry, when you work in joints that give a damn, you spin the ice creams fresh daily and melt down any leftover ice cream in the fridge each night to spin the next day. Apply the same philosophy in your kitchen. Freshly spun ice cream will make you and your friends and family ice-cream snobs in all the right ways.
Scoop the ice cream into your favorite pie crust, sandwich it between your favorite cookies, scoop it into a bowl and decorate with your favorite breakfast cereal and jam or jelly, or blend it into a milkshake (cereal milk blended with cereal milk ice cream will change your life).–Christina Tosi
☞ Table of Contents
LC Bloomin’ Onion, Er, Blooming Gelatin Note
There are no eggs in this ice cream. None At all. Pastry chef Christina Tosi instead relies on gelatin, as explained above. But in order to incorporate gelatin seamlessly into a mixture, Tosi explains, it must first be softened, or “bloomed.” Once it is bloomed, in order to incorporate either kind of gelatin (sheet or powdered) into a mixture, you need to dissolve the gelatin in hot, but not boiling, liquid—usually a bit of whatever it will be mixed into. If the gelatin gets too hot, it will lose its strength and you will have to start over again.
In this recipe
Cereal Milk Ice Cream
Equipment
- Ice cream maker
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 gelatin sheets or 1/4 teaspoon powdered gelatin
- 1 recipe cereal milk
- 2 teaspoons freeze-dried corn powder (optional)
- 2 tablespoons light brown sugar tightly packed
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 cup milk powder
- 1 tablespoon light corn syrup
Directions
- If using sheet gelatin, soak it in a small bowl of cold water until it has become soft, about 2 minutes. If the gelatin still has hard bits to it, it needs to bloom longer. If it is so soft it is falling apart, it is overbloomed; discard the gelatin and start over. Gently squeeze the bloomed gelatin to remove any excess water before using.
If using powdered gelatin, sprinkle it evenly over a scant 2 tablespoons cold water in a cup. If you pour the powdered gelatin into a pile on top of the water, the granules in the center will remain hard and will not bloom. If you use too much water to bloom the gelatin, it will dilute the flavor of the recipe and its consistency will be looser than intended. Allow the granules to soften entirely in the cold water for 3 to 5 minutes. - Warm a little bit of the cereal milk and whisk in the gelatin to dissolve. Whisk in the remaining cereal milk, the corn powder, if using, sugar, salt, milk powder, and corn syrup until everything is fully dissolved and incorporated. This is your ice-cream base.
- Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into your ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The ice cream is best made just before serving, but it will keep in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 2 weeks.
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Recipe Testers’ Reviews
Oh my, this ice cream was fantastic! It had a buttery, sweet flavor that was pure delight. The texture was smooth and creamy. You can almost feel the crunch, yet it does not taste like cereal. We ate ours right out of the ice cream maker. Since you can make the cereal milk in advance, this ice cream comes together in a snap. It’s the kind of dessert that will really impress your friends. We loved it.
This is a very interesting technique for making ice cream without eggs. The only caveat is that it all depends on the cereal milk, which you have to make first. What I liked: the flavor was really interesting. What I didn’t like: I think it’s a little involved. I did make the corn syrup mixture as indicated and the ice cream was very smooth.
Originally published May 30, 2012
Hi,
Quick question, after you made your ice cream base, do you need to chill the mixture in the fridge or go ahead and toss it into your ice cream maker to churn? Great recipe. Thx!
Rose, you can start churning it immediately in your ice cream maker. The base won’t be hot as you only warm a little bit of the cereal milk just to dissolve the gelatin.
I followed the recipe and the result was very icy (not smooth rich & creamy). Sad Panda.
I just made this as I had the same result. @Renee, I used whole milk.
Lindsy, thanks so much for letting us know. We’re going to retest the recipe this week and I’ll be back in touch. We didn’t experience the iciness at all in our repeated testing but I want to try to recreate what happened in your kitchen so we can caution readers how to prevent it. Am so sorry it didn’t turn out spectacularly for you.
I’m sorry to hear that, HS. I’m surprised since we didn’t experience that at all when we made it in two different home kitchens. Can I ask, did you use whole milk?
Should you melt and refreeze ice cream? Sounds like a recipe for bacteria
Thanks for your concern, but did you happen to read the recipe, ruth? That’s not what’s happening here at all…