This sweet cream ice cream recipe contains no vanilla. And no eggs. Just milk, cream, cream cheese, and sugar. And it tastes just like the rendition at Cold Stone Creamery that started the whole sweet cream sensation. If you’ve not experienced it, think of it as sorta like cheesecake in both its richly indulgent taste and its obscenely smooth texture. Although it’s actually sorta indefinable. Sorta something you need to experience it for yourself.–David Leite
Sweet Cream Ice Cream FAQs
Well, they’re both made from corn – but they’re not the same and aren’t interchangeable. Corn syrup (both light and dark) can be easily found in the baking section of nearly any grocery store. It’s generally kept near sugar, maple syrups, and molasses. Some versions of light corn syrup have a bit of vanilla added (Karo brand , for one). Dark corn syrup is enhanced with things to make it taste more like molasses. High fructose corn syrup isn’t something you’ll find in the store for home use because it’s made specifically for commercially processed and produced food items. You’ll see HFCS on food labels.
Check out the notes below the recipe. Sweet cream ice cream is delicious eaten alone, but it’s also a “blank canvas”, so feel free to add your favorite fruits, nuts, toppings, jams, candies, or whatever else your heart desires. If you love the Cold Stone experience and want to try that out at home, visit our shop and check out this super sweet Parlor Ice Cream Mixing set.
Sweet Cream Ice Cream
Equipment
- Ice cream maker
Ingredients
- 2 2/3 cups whole milk
- 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons cornstarch
- 4 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
- 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup light corn syrup, [Editor’s Note: Just to clarify, this is different than high-fructose corn syrup and is not nearly as terrible for you. Promise.]
Instructions
- In a small bowl, mix about 2 tablespoons milk with the cornstarch to make a smooth slurry.
- In a slightly larger bowl, whisk the cream cheese and salt until smooth.
- Fill a large bowl halfway with ice water.
- In a 4-quart saucepan, combine the remaining milk, heavy cream, sugar, and corn syrup and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Keep it at a boil for 4 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and gradually whisk in the cornstarch slurry. Bring the mixture back to a boil over medium-high heat and cook, stirring with a heatproof spatula, until slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Remove from the heat.
- Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese mixture until smooth. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon resealable plastic freezer bag, squeezing out as much air as possible before sealing it. Submerge the bag filled with the ice cream base in the ice water and let stand, adding more ice as necessary, until cold, about 30 minutes or tuck it in the fridge and let it rest for up to several hours.
- Process the ice cream base according to your ice cream machine manufacturer's directions. (The ice cream mixture will be very thick even when you begin to churn it. Don't fret. This is okay.)
- Transfer the churned ice cream into a container with a lid. Press a sheet of parchment directly against the surface of the ice cream and seal it. Stash the ice cream in the coldest part of your freezer until firm, at least 4 hours.
Notes
Sweet Cream Ice Cream Variation
Sweet Cream Ice Cream With Fruit Swirl Variation To layer jam or caramel sauce into ice cream, start by drizzling a spoonful of jam or caramel in the bottom of the storage container and spread a layer of ice cream over it. Add a few more spoonfuls of gooey stuff over the nooks of the ice cream. The sauce should not cover the underlying layer of ice cream. Then add another ice cream layer. Continue the sauce and ice cream layering until all the ice cream is used. Note that you do not want to “swirl” the sauce into the ice cream because it will get lost; instead, try to keep it in small pockets throughout the ice cream for a more dramatic presentation and flavor. We also like to add a few final spoonfuls of sauce on the top for decoration, just before covering everything with parchment. What Else You Can Do With Sweet Cream Ice Cream This sweet cream ice cream recipe is my classic, creamy, smooth ice cream base for several recipes—it can be used to make any flavor you wish. It’s the ideal blank canvas. It’s wonderful by itself or in a sundae or with any sauce or jam layered throughout. You can customize it with the addition of essential oils and extracts, fruits, herbs, spices, nuts, crumbled cakes, cookies, as well as jams and sauces. One of our all-time biggest hits, and one of my personal favorites, is where the sweet cream ice cream is swirled with blackberry jam.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Recipe Testers’ Reviews
This is an excellent ice cream base recipe that can be used in tons of variations. The basic recipe is just like the title promises—sweet, creamy, and scoopable right out of the freezer.
I had homemade blueberry preserves on hand, so that’s what I went with as an add-in. (Blueberries and cream are a match made in heaven.) I chilled the sweet cream ice cream mixture in the fridge for about 8 hours before churning it as I didn’t have the time to churn it the same day, and ice cream bases benefit from a long rest in the fridge anyway. Adding the blueberry jam by the spoonful worked very well and a final spoonful (or two) on top added a nice touch and made sure there was a burst of flavor with every scoop.
Do not take a shortcut with the 4 minutes boiling time. This is important for the sugars in the milk to fully cook and will improve the texture and flavor of the ice cream.
This sweet cream ice cream recipe works as written EVERY SINGLE TIME! This has been my go-to ice cream recipe for more than a year. One of the many great things about this recipe is the substitution of cream cheese for egg. interestingly, I would say that the flavor of this fabulous ice cream, when served plain, is custard-like. Considering the lack of egg, this seems unusual.
This also has no vanilla, but splitting a whole vanilla bean and scraping the seeds into the mix before you boil it produces wonderful results!
I have made many flavors using this basic recipe and have always been pleased. Just a couple suggestions follow…
When you mix the hot cream with the cream cheese, whisk it well, or you may end up with chunks of cream cheese, which can be delicious but isn’t what you’re looking for.
Also, I like to freeze the finished ice cream for another 5 or 6 hours to make it very solid, although you can eat it immediately after churning and it’s still top-notch. I really love this recipe, and you can make it in a little more than half an hour, about the same amount of time it’d take to drive to the store to buy something that wouldn’t be nearly as good!
I loved the texture and taste of this sweet cream ice cream. It was smooth and creamy. There isn’t any vanilla called for in the recipe, so the taste is pure sweet cream and cream cheese.
I didn’t layer it with a sauce or jam, but I could see adding a strawberry or blackberry coulis to it.
When I’ve made ice cream in the past, it usually froze in 20 minutes, but this sweet cream ice cream took about 35 minutes. I transferred it to a quart container and let it freeze overnight.
One of my favorite ice creams to make is Jeni’s Black Coffee Ice Cream. It was a tester recipe here a few years ago, and it’s a real winner. The cream cheese, the cornstarch slurry, the cooking method, the parchment paper covering the finished product are all similar to this recipe. How could I not try this recipe? This is even easier to make than the black coffee ice cream and is so much easier to make than ice creams that are made with egg yolks. You basically mix up some ingredients, boil them for a few minutes, whisk in the cornstarch slurry, boil for another minute, then mix everything into the cream cheese. That’s it.
As advertised, this ice cream tastes like sweet cream. It’s a great base for add-ins. I treated each pint differently. With the first pint, I poured some dark chocolate sauce in between the layers and sprinkled pistachio toffee over that. After being in the freezer for awhile, the chocolate sauce solidified too much. The ice cream really needed to soften or you had to break through the layers. I would not make this with a chocolate sauce again. (Did I really say that?)
When making the second pint, I found a forgotten jar of brandied cherries that I’d made last summer in the refrigerator. I boiled down and thickened the sauce with a little cornstarch and chopped the cherries. I layered that into one of the pint containers with the ice cream. Really yummy.
Earlier in the day I had made honey nut pralines, which I sprinkled in between layers of ice cream for the third pint. The coating melted a bit and created a tiny bit of sauce here and there. Another winner.
I’m sure that when I make this ice cream again, I will have thought of something else. I must say, however, that the ice cream is also really very good on its own, and that next time I will be sure to let more of the base shine through.
I never put my ice cream mixture into a plastic bag as the recipe directs you to. When making Jeni’s ice creams, I always put my mixture in a deep bowl (this saves you a bowl to wash if you have the cream cheese in that bowl) and then place this bowl in a larger bowl which is filled partway with ice water. I then put that into the refrigerator. It cools down beautifully.
I was not able to process my ice cream after the 30 minutes called for in the recipe. I was delayed, and the mixture ended up sitting in the refrigerator for 5 1/2 hours. I have never found it to be a problem having it spend some extra time in the fridge.
This is a simple-to-follow ice cream recipe with good results. My entire family tried the ice cream, and there were good reviews all around. I’d recommend strawberries as a topping or mix-in. I think this would be fabulous served in a waffle cone—perhaps one with a cinnamon or vanilla flavor.
The mixture smelled rather sour as I poured it into my ice cream maker, which made me wonder if I had sour milk, but no worries—what I was smelling was the tang of the cream cheese.
Terrific, C.!