Incredible No-Churn Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Recipe

 

 

An easy recipe for a rich chocolate chip ice cream that has just 4 real food ingredients and doesn’t require an ice cream maker – really!

Have you ever found yourself needing ice cream for a party but no way to get to a store? Or maybe you’d just prefer not to have all the other ‘ingredients’ that are added to most ice creams (Polysorbate 80, anyone?). Or you love the decadent and expensive ice creams and would appreciate a cost-saving alternative?

Do I have a (another!) recipe for you. When I made this incredible no-churn chocolate ice cream recipe awhile ago, it fulfilled all three of these desires at once for our family. Since coming up with that recipe I have experimented with other flavor variations, including the one I’m sharing here – a no-churn chocolate chip ice cream full of small and large chocolate chunks.

I actually did find myself ‘needing’ ice cream for a birthday party for Brian. I had made a dark chocolate torte and you cannot have a birthday without ice cream in my family. Can.Not.

While there was no ice cream in the freezer, I did have a can of sweetened condensed milk and some cream. And we all knew the rich and wonderful ice cream this combination can make. Since Brian’s favorite flavor is vanilla with chocolate chips, I knew I had to try this variation with the no-churn recipe.

No-Churn Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

With this recipe, all I needed was four ingredients (the can of milk, whipped cream, vanilla, and chocolate chips), and 10 minutes. In fact, I don’t think it even took 10 minutes, since my mixer whipped the cream for me!

See the chocolate chips in the ice cream above? You’ll notice that they’re not just regular baking chips thrown in the mixture before freezing. That’s because I discovered that if the chips are just thrown in they sink to the bottom before the mixture is frozen enough to hold them. Also, regular chocolate chips alone seem to be just hard chunks in between vanilla ice cream- not really chocolatey.

Here’s what I came up with to get different sized chunks and chocolate throughout the ice cream:

Simply whir the chocolate chips in a food processor before adding to the whipped cream mixture.

After chopping for a couple seconds you’ll be left with all different sizes of chocolate- small shards all the way up to the large chunks that the processor doesn’t chop completely.

As you can see, the chopped chocolate creates the perfect ratio for chocolate chip ice cream- it amps up the chocolate flavor in every bite and still leaves a few chunks to chew on – without causing dental problems, ha!

I did one more thing slightly different with this variation: I whipped the cream to stiff peaks instead of soft peaks to give the mixture more substance in order to hold all of the chips in place while it was freezing. And it worked great – not even the larger chunks sunk to the bottom!

The lesson here? Keep a can of sweetened condensed milk and a carton of whipped cream on hand at all times. You never know when an ice cream emergency will happen.

Click the arrow for the full printable recipe!