Fresh Raspberry Ice Cream (No-Churn) & Video With Candace Nelson, Founder of Sprinkles Cupcakes

It's not every day you get asked over by Candace Nelson to make ice cream in her home, you know?Wait, before I go any further let me just say that I HATE it when people brag about their awesome lives and leave no room for humility or relate-ability. Like "Oh look at me, I just won an award and the lottery and a trip to Hawaii and a car and new boobs and I'm amazing blah blah blah blah". I mean, when so much goodness happens to one person I can't help but feel like I must be doing something terribly wrong.So getting asked to film with Candace for a little instagram series she's putting together made me feel like OMG! I won! Like I totally did something right and I win at LIFE! When in all honestly, life has felt like an ant infested picnic lately - aka it's been freaking hard and I've blasted music a little too loud probably a little too often trying to sing my troubles away at the top of my lungs. I've doubted my dreams and myself and cleaned up my tears with many chocolate stained napkins. Details for another day if I'm brave enough to share it all.ANYWAY, Candace is the founder of Sprinkles Cupcakes and I've been an admirer and fan of hers for a very long time. Like, major fangirl over here. Maybe one of my superpowers is not getting starstruck because she is just as warm and welcoming and generous as you'd hope her to be and I absolutely loved spending time with her. Like, I already consider her my friend. I was surprised I kept my cool (see aforementioned star-struck comment) - although I probably don't seem like it in this video LOL!I also learned from this filming experience - that even though I really hate the way I look on film - (I'm pregnant and chubby and TRYING to be gracious to myself) - it totally brings out this fun, bright-light, hammy side of me and I really, really love it. It makes me feel fun and young again and reminds me of being on stage back in the day.Did you know that about me? That I used to sing and stuff? It was fun.I'm totally talking too much about myself huh?Sorry.Anyway, being in front of a camera and teaching people how to make something is such a blast - and getting to do it all with someone as special and as awesome as Candace was just the cherry on top.Please bask in my ridiculous, bubbling, blushing self (I could only bear to watch it once) and love this video. Oh! And make this ice cream. It's so good and worth it and the perfect balance of easy-like-Sunday-morning and tangy sweet. It's Summer in a scoop. Maybe it's me in a scoop?Nah, I'm way more complicated.Cheers to unexpectedly great things happening when you feel nothing's gone quite right in awhile.Love you friends. xoPs. I'm so sorry I've been gone from this space. I've been working on some other projects that I'll be sharing on here soon - including a new website! Woohoo! PPS - Are we friends on instagram yet? I pop on there way too often. xo

Fresh Raspberry Ice Cream (No-Churn)

If fresh raspberries are in season near you, use them! The reason is really not so much taste (although they really do taste better) but fresh raspberries yield so much more juice when cooked down.

for the raspberries:

• 4 cups / 600g raspberries (fresh or frozen (to yield about 1 ½ cups / 375 ml of raspberry juice))
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• ¼ teaspoons kosher salt

for the ice cream:

• 14 ounces / 1 can / 397g sweetened condensed milk (chilled (just stick your can in the fridge))
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 ounces / 57g cream cheese (room temperature)
• 2 cups / 500ml heavy cream

for the raspberries:

1. Put raspberries, sugar and salt in a heavy bottomed sauce pan and bring to a gentile simmer over medium heat.

2. Cook for about 5 minutes, pressing the raspberries down with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula as you stir.

3. Set up a medium bowl with a large to medium-sized sieve over it.

4. Pour hot raspberries through the sieve, pressing down with a rubber spatula. Stir and press and stir and press to release all the juices, making sure you scrape the bottom of the sieve as you go.

5. Cool raspberry juice until chilled.

   tip: If you need to speed up the chilling process, give the juice an “ice bath” by putting it in a bowl, and putting that raspberry juice-filled bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice. Stir it around. It should cool down quickly. note: Remember we want about 1 ½ cups of juice total.

for the ice cream:

1. In a medium bowl whisk together chilled raspberry juice, chilled sweetened condensed milk, salt and vanilla. The mixture will go from this gorgeous ruby red to a “teenager” lipstick purple. (I just made that up, but seriously, what color would you call that purple? Teenage lipstick right? Okay good.)

2. In a standing mixer with the whisk attachment, beat cream cheese until smooth and light (about 5 minutes). note: Make SURE your cream cheese is room temperature here or else it will make your ice cream lumpy. Slowly stream in some of the cold cream, only adding about ⅓ cup at first to get all the cream cheese friendly with the cream. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and whip again until the mixture seems somewhat smooth but not completely lump free (about 1 minute). tip + trick! I take the whisk out here, wash it quickly and use it again. I found that if I used a clean whisk when beating in the rest of the cream, I never got lumpy ice cream.

3. Then slowly stream in the rest of the cold cream and beat until barely stiff peaks form. You might want to pause and scrape down the bowl a few times as you reach the stiff peaks.

   note: It’s SUPER important that you don’t over whip your cream here or else it will mess with the consistency of the ice cream. If you beat cream too long you’re going to get butter. And even though butter is delicious, it messes with the mouthfeel of our ice cream. So watch it.
   

4. Plop half of the whipped cream into the raspberry mixture and gently fold in with a spatula until almost combined.

5. bakers term: Remember “folding” is scooping from the bottom of the bowl and “folding” the raspberry liquid over the whipped cream, trying not to deflate the whipped cream as much as possible. When bakers use the term “fold” it means we’re trying to not let the air out of something as we mix it in, in this case, it’s our whipped cream. Traditional ice cream incorporates air by churning it in an ice cream maker, but because we’re not using an ice cream maker here, we’re incorporating the air through the whipped cream, so it’s important we don’t lose it all when mixing the whipped cream in.

6. Then add the rest of the whipped cream to the mixture and gently fold until completely combined and no lumps remain. This part takes a bit of elbow grease, but it’s worth it. Mixture should appear fluff-like, thick, and smooth.

7. Pour prepared ice cream into a 9” bread tin (or any size that will hold all the ice cream - it doesn't matter) or another container of your liking. (You don’t need to grease the tin, but you might want to line it with plastic wrap if you're going to be storing it in a metal container for a long time - the acid from the berries can react to the metal if stored in there for a while).

8. Freeze for at least 6 hours, tightly covered in plastic wrap. Keeps for about 1-3 weeks.

9. Serve in sugar cones or bowls. xo

bakers note: If fresh raspberries are in season near you, use them! The reason is really not so much taste (although they really do taste better) but fresh raspberries yield so much more juice when cooked down. You need about 1 ½ cups / 375ml of juice to make this recipe really zing. Any amount of juice less than that just leaves you with a flat tasting, hint-of raspberry ice cream that’s beautifully pale pink but lacks the pep it deserves. The cream, sweetened condensed milk, and raspberry juice are all a gorgeous marriage of tangy-sweet that’s wildly addicting and irresistible. So! Just keep that in mind if you use frozen berries you may need more berries than the recipe calls for to yield the 1 ½ cups of juice. :)