Blueberries, biscuits, creamy vanilla ice cream: this has to be a good base to make ice cream. Using sous vide, this recipe is quick and easy. The recipe can be easily adjusted based on your preferences or based on the ingredients you have at hand. Most cream cheeses will work, I have made this recipe both with typical MonChou cheese and with Italian mascarpone. Not a fan of blueberries? The same recipe can be used with other fruits.

Recipe for sous vide blueberry ice cream

Ingredients

These ingredients results in 1000 grams of ice cream base and is roughly the quantity needed for a single run of most ice cream machines.

  • 434 grams double cream (35% fat)
  • 104 grams whole milk (3.4% fat)
  • 68 grams skim milk powder
  • 150 grams cream cheese or mascarpone
  • 160 grams granulated sugar
  • 84 grams egg yolks
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 0.3 grams salt
  • Biscuits of your choice (I use Dutch Bastogne cookies)

For the blueberry swirl:

  • 225 grams blueberries (fresh or frozen)
  • 150 grams blueberries to dry (optional)
  • 170 grams granulated sugar (I used unrefined cane sugar)
  • 2.5 grams citric acid (or lemon juice)
  • 1 gram of salt

Equipment

  • Emersion circulator. I use an Anova, but any brand will do.
  • Vacuum pouches + sealer. I use a fairly cheap vacuum sealer from Foodsaver.
  • Waterbath, can be a large pan or plastic container.
  • Saucepan to heat the cream and the swirl.
  • Food dehydrator (optional), I use an WMF mini dehydrator.
  • Ice cream churner, I use a Smart Scoop from Breville. Available as the Sage Smart Scoop in Europe.

Note on sous vide: This recipe can also be made non-sous vide if you have access to a food thermometer. Instead of heating the mixture in a water bath, heat the mixture on the stove and keep it for 25 minutes at 72 °C. Heating the mixture on the stove will result in more evaporation; to counter this, you can increase the amount of cream with 10%. I haven’t tested the non-sous vide version, let me know your results in the comments!

Perparing the base

  1. Heat the water bath, set the circulator to 72 °C.
  2. Combine sugar, eggs and salt. Add milk powder. Mix well.
  3. Add the cream cheese.
  4. Add the milk and cream.
  5. Transfer the mixture to a vacuum bag.
  6. Seal the bag and add it to the water bath.
  7. Heat the mixture for 30 minutes at 72 °C.
  8. Remove the bag from the water bath and transfer to a bowl with ice water. Cool the mixture as fast as possible. You can also cool the bag under running water in the sink.
  9. Store the mixture in the bag in the fridge overnight.

Drying blueberries (optional)

Preferably, you don’t want to use whole fresh berries inside your ice cream base as these will freeze solid. One alternative way to add berries is to first dry them using a dehydrator. On the day that you make the ice cream, dehydrate 150 grams of blueberries at a low temperature in a dehydrator. After several hours they will look like raisins. After dehydration, you can add them to the swirl mixture.

If you don’t have a dehydrator, or want to skip this step to save time, you can skip the whole blueberries altogether or accept that they will freeze solid.

Ice cream fresh out of the churner. At this stage the ice cream has the texture of soft serve.

Ice cream fresh out of the churner. At this stage the ice cream has the texture of soft serve.

Making the swirl and churning the ice

Do this the next day, after the ice cream mix has chilled in the fridge overnight.

  1. Pre-cool a storage container for the ice cream in the freezer. Crumble the cookies and also store in the freezer to cool.
  2. Add the 225 grams of blueberries together with the sugar, citric acid and salt to a saucepan.
  3. Slowly heat the berry mixture and, with a fork, crush the berries to the consistency of your liking.
  4. Let the mixture slowly boil for a few minutes, making sure all sugar is dissolved. If you dehydrated berries, add them now. Remove from the heat and let cool.
  5. Sieve the ice cream mixture and add one tablespoon of the vanilla extract by taste.
  6. Churn the ice cream according to the instructions of your ice cream machine.
  7. At the end of the churn, add the crumbled cookies.
  8. After churning, quickly transfer the ice cream to a pre-cooled storage container. While transferring the ice cream, alternate with the blueberry swirl. Coarsely mix the swirl in the ice cream.
  9. Let the ice cream harden in the freezer; this takes roughly 3 hours. If your freezer has a high setting, this is a good time to use it. The faster the ice cream freezes, the better.

Enjoy!