DIY Ice Cream

If you haven't guessed already from the artwork on this blog, Lillian and I both love ice cream and gelato. We love it in the summer, we love it in the winter, and we especially love trying wacky new flavours and toppings. I remember the first time I tried something really different was at Sydney Festival 2014, when Gelato Messina came out with some really creative carnival-inspired gelato treats disguised in the form of hot dogs and toffee apples. I chose to try a sundae with cheesecake gelato, duck-fat caramel, crushed potato chips and bacon marshmallows, and I was so pleasantly surprised by how the sweet and salty flavours mingled together. Thus began a torrid love affair; whenever I hear about a quirky new ice cream or gelato, whether it's from Aqua S, Stix, N2, Cow & The Moon, or the mighty Messina itself, I crave to try it.

You can imagine my excitement when I discovered DIY ice cream mixes! I'd used cake mixes many times before, but I'd never known that you could make your own ice cream in a similar way. I decided to use Aeroplane Sweet Treats vanilla flavour, which would allow me to create whatever flavour I wanted on top of the mild vanilla base. I spent a long time thinking about which flavour to use, but eventually, (after many many weeks of hard decision-making), I chose to make one batch of coconut flavour and one batch of coffee flavour.

The directions on the back of the box suggest using 50mL of thickened cream and 200mL of milk. The method is so simple that even I couldn't stuff it up: all you need to do is combine the cream and milk with the ice cream mix and whip the mixture on high speed for 4 minutes, so that the texture becomes light like meringue, and then freeze it overnight. For my coconut flavour, I decided to substitute the milk with 200mL of coconut cream, which would give it a richer taste. I also decided to add chocolate chips and crushed roasted cashews to give it some sweetness, nuttiness, and texture. With my coffee batch, I added chocolate chips along with four generous tablespoons of Nescafe Azera premium instant coffee to give it a dark, intense flavour. 

Overall, the ice cream turned out surprisingly well! Although it obviously wasn't as elegant or refined as what you would get from a place such as Gelato Messina, it tasted really nice as I was able to have full control over the sweetness and flavour, and could adjust it to my own personal preferences. The texture was lovely, and the ice cream itself was strangely not that cold - perfect for a winter evening dessert. It was so fun and easy to do, it made me feel like a kitchen goddess even though I'm pretty hopeless at making anything else. If I was going to do it again, I'd love to get more creative with the flavours and toppings, and maybe try giving it a salty twist. I would definitely recommend you give it a go if you're an ice cream fanatic like myself, and maybe you'll even come up with your own daring Messina-esque creations!