Best Peach Ice Cream Recipe with Fresh Peaches
This homemade peach ice cream recipe in an ice cream maker is the most popular ice cream recipe on my website for good reason. It's an old-fashioned peach ice cream recipe made with fresh peaches for real peach flavor and a perfectly sweetened custard base made from simple ingredients like heavy cream, whole milk, sugar, and egg yolks. The sweet taste of peaches and cream shine in this summertime favorite!
Servings: 6 servings
Calories: 481kcal
Ingredients
- 3 medium peaches, peeled and sliced (about 2 cups)
- 1 ¼ cup granulated sugar, divided
- ½ teaspoon lemon juice
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 5 large egg yolks
- 1 ½ cup heavy cream
- 1 ½ cups whole milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Peel and slice peaches, then toss in a large bowl with ½ cup of the sugar (if doubling the recipe make sure to double this sugar amount to 1 cup) and lemon juice to combine. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes to an hour, until the peaches are soft and have released their juices to create a syrupy liquid.
- Once the peaches have released their juices, mash them with a fork or potato masher until only very small chunks of peach remain. You don't want large, individual pieces of peach in your ice cream or they will freeze very hard. Strain the juice into a separate bowl, reserving both the liquid and the mashed peaches and refrigerating until ready to use.
- Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, stir together the cream, milk, another ½ cup of the sugar, and the salt. Heat over medium-low heat until hot, but not bubbling.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and remaining ¼ cup of sugar, until light in color, about two minutes.
- While whisking, slowly pour in ½ cup of the hot cream mixture into the egg yolk and sugar mixture to temper the eggs before adding them to the custard base. Slowly add another ½ cup of hot cream, whisking the entire time.
- Pour the tempered egg yolks into the saucepan with the rest of the custard base and stir gently with a wooden spoon for 2-4 minutes, or until the temperature is between 170-175 and the mixture is just thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla.
- Strain the custard base through a fine mesh strainer into a clean bowl, then stir in liquid from the mashed peaches and refrigerate for 4 hours, until thoroughly chilled.
- Pour peach ice cream base into ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturer's instructions, until it looks like soft-serve ice cream, about 25-30 minutes. Add the reserved mashed peaches during the last 30 seconds or so of the churning process, then transfer the ice cream to an airtight container and freeze at least 4-6 hours to ripen.
Video
Notes
- No-cook version: Alternatively, if you are intimidated by a custard-base ice cream, you could just use 2 whole eggs instead of 5 egg yolks and skip the process of heating the cream, milk and sugar then tempering the eggs. Just follow the steps of the recipe with the peaches, sugar, and lemon juice, then to make the ice cream base, just whisk the 2 whole eggs really well in a large bowl before slowly adding the sugar while whisking. Stir in the cream, milk, vanilla and peach juices, then continue with the recipe as written to churn and freeze.
- Storage: This homemade peach ice cream will be good for about 1-2 weeks stored in the freezer. It doesn't last quite as long as the store bought kinds because there are no preservatives or added ingredients to keep it from crystallizing.
- Use a 1.5- to 2-quart ice cream maker: The smaller size ice cream maker barely fits the full batch, but I can usually get away with it without overflowing the base. If you only have a 1-quart ice cream maker you will need to churn the base in batches.
- Avoiding scrambled eggs: By adding the hot liquid slowly to the whisk egg yolks, this helps prevent them from scrambling. If your liquid is boiling or you cook the base too long after adding the eggs, this can occur.
- Chunks of fruit: It's tempting to leave large chunks of peach in the ice cream, but they freeze into little peach ice cubes, so it's best to mash them pretty fine for the smoothest results.
- Mix-ins: This ice cream base is delicious on it's own, but if you wanted to add mix-ins you might consider something like chopped Golden Oreo cookies, small chunks of blondies or yellow cake, or a broken up graham cracker crust from the store.
- Ice cream sandwiches: Make ice cream sandwiches with my favorite gingerbread cookies or molasses cookies. Peach + Gingerbread = Heaven.
Nutrition
Calories: 481kcal | Carbohydrates: 54g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 28g | Saturated Fat: 16g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 2g | Monounsaturated Fat: 9g | Cholesterol: 241mg | Sodium: 153mg | Potassium: 285mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 51g | Vitamin A: 1422IU | Vitamin C: 5mg | Calcium: 131mg | Iron: 1mg