Delicious Homemade Ice Cream Recipes

Recipe: Buttermilk-Plum Ice Cream

This frozen treat will make your insides feel like the temperature is taking a plunge, but your heart will be warm at the thought of a taste of Buttermilk-Plum Ice Cream. Its ruby-colored swirls—the source of its name— come from fresh plums. Half-and-half, buttermilk, and heavy cream help form its rich base, while peeled and chopped black plums add in beautiful color and flavor.

Recipe: Justine’s Pineapple Mint Ice Cream

Southern food maven Julia Reed tells a story of how Justine’s, the famous Memphis restaurant, always had one or two homemade ice creams ready for its guests to enjoy. In this recipe, she recreates the flavors of one of her favorites, a Pineapple-Mint Ice Cream. One of the great flavor enhancers for this tasty treat is white crème de menthe, which pairs well with fresh mint leaves for a subtle-but-bright taste. Crushed pineapple and pineapple juice add in some delicious citrus flavors. For an authentic taste of the Southern summer, a bowl of this ice cream will have you feel like you’re splashing your feet in the river and enjoying the warmth of the season.

Recipe: Blueberry-Lemon Zest Ice Cream

Having sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk in the recipe mean that this will be a rich and creamy delight. Mix in some fresh blueberries and eating a bite of this is literally like having your mouth stained with berries and sunshine. Just before this frigid favorite is ready to be scooped out, stirring a little lemon zest into the ice-cream base adds just the right amount of subtle citrus bite to this sweet sensation. You’ll love how these two flavors go together. Once you’ve had a bite of this bright and flavorful ice cream, you may find that is too good to limit yourself to just one scoop.

Recipe: Bourbon-Butter-Salted Pecan Ice Cream

This is a take on the classic Butter-Pecan Ice Cream. We just can’t resist the salty sweet combination in this ice-cream recipe. Those butter-toasted pecans dusted with salt have a great crunch.  Once they’re stirred into the ice cream, the question of whether you prefer salty or sweet doesn’t have to be answered because you’ve got them both. Adding in just a hint of bourbon brings in the smoky sweetness of this Southern spirit. This is, to quote one reviewer, “amazing.” So let the idea of classic butter pecan be your guide, but amp it up with great add-ins. Salt and bourbon make this a dessert you’ll always want to have on the table.

Recipe: Strawberry-Basil Ice-Cream

This ice cream is not a mix of sweet and savory, but it certainly is a mix of sweet and herby. These flavors collide in this refreshing treat to create an unmistakable and irresistible treat. Pulsing the strawberries, basil, and lemon juice all at once ensures that all the tastes of each are beautifully combined. A few hours in the freezer and this pink delight emerges with the tastes of fruit and basil. You’ll love the rich flavor and creamy, smooth texture from the sweetened condensed milk, whole milk, and evaporated milk combo. Dollop a big scoop of this in a bowl, or on a cone, and savor every bite.

Recipe: Coffee Liqueur Cookies-and-Cream Ice Cream

If you can imagine dipping cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies in an adult version of frozen milk you can pretty much imagine this incredible dessert. It simply builds on the delights of a basic cookies-and-cream ice cream, taking its flavors to the next level. This dreamy ice-cream recipe is the perfect after-dinner treat when you are entertaining. It combines the chocolaty goodness and crunch of cream-filled sandwich cookies with the sweetness of an incredible ice cream. Simply pick your favorite coffee-flavored liqueur, and you’ll have the perfect adult addition to this tasty frozen treat.

Recipe: Lemon Icebox Pie Ice Cream

If you’ve been wondering how to get one of your favorite chilled and sliced desserts out of the pie cooler and into a cup or cone somehow, this Lemon Icebox Pie Ice Cream recipe is the perfect solution. Homemade ice cream with four simple ingredients and a tangy citrus twist reinvents the classic Southern icebox pie. When you’re done preparing this you may want to scoop out some large dollops onto waffle cone pieces. However you choose to enjoy this delight the result will be the same, meaning there probably won’t be too much left to go back into the freezer—a Southerner can tell you that ice cream melts in the icebox!

Recipe: No-Cook Peach Ice Cream

Peaches are a sweet taste of summer, and adding them to ice cream only makes the flavors of the season more sensational. Many homemade ice cream recipes require cooking a custard base first, but for this easy peach ice cream you simply freeze sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, whole milk, and fresh peaches. Taking the cooking step out of the process has you enjoying scoops of this seasonal treat sooner. Choosing the taste of fresh peaches—one of our favorite Southern fruits—means that you will delight in some of the best produce our that comes from our farms and goes straight to your table, or in this case straight on top of that cone!

Recipe: Key Lime Pie Ice Cream

You’ll probably feel like you are in the Florida Keys, enjoying white sand beaches and reading Papa Hemingway novels, from the moment you have your first bite of Key Lime Pie Ice Cream. And who wouldn’t want to serve the classic pie in ice-cream form? Key lime juice, zest, and graham cracker crumbs make this ice cream taste just like the real deal. You’ll literally need to get your hands on some of those special citrus fruits—the tiny Key limes that give this South Florida delicacy its special flavors—to grate the zest that makes this pie ice-cream so special. It is well worth the effort because once you have it in the bowl you’ll feel like you’ve been lounging on the verandah the entire time anyway.