For my birthday this year, I decided I wanted to be low key. I figured since I’ve already started selectively forgetting how old I am, it’s probably silly to make a big deal about my “special day” with the usual group dinner party/bar-hopping extravaganza. So instead, Dan and I celebrated my 27th a few days early with junk food and wine at a local vineyard with some friends, and a deliciously messy lunch with my parents at a no-plates, no-utensils, everything-tastes-better-when-you-eat-with-your-hands seafood joint the next day. So tasty. And, so much fun!
And, for my birthday treat, I made ice cream! Honest to goodness, creamy-smooth ice cream with thick swirls of tangy blueberry sauce, made without churning. Dan wants to know why I wasted money on an ice cream maker if I’m not even going to use it the one time I decide to make ice cream. I’m going to use it! Eventually. I just didn’t have all the ingredients (or the patience) to make fancy pants slow churned ice cream for my birthday. And with this recipe, all I had to do was mix up a few simple ingredients, pour everything into a loaf pan, and wait patient for my freezer to do magic. Sure beats baking and frosting a cake, right? I think ice cream may become a new birthday tradition around here.
And don’t let Dan’s grumbling fool you — he loved this ice cream. He’s a sucker for anything with blueberries in it, and was upset he had to wait any amount of time for the cream to freeze up/be ready to eat. I couldn’t blame him – I could tell this ice cream was going to be phenomenal just from licking the beaters. The base mixture for the ice cream is rich and milky-sweet, and provides the perfect contrast to the tart sweetness of the blueberry sauce. Once frozen and eaten together, the ice cream maybe isn’t quite as soft and rich as your standard slow-churned version, but is definitely delicious and tastes amazingly like blueberry cheesecake. A fabulous alternative to store-bought ice cream. I will definitely be making this again.
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream
- 1 can (14oz) sweetened condensed milk
- 7 oz cream cheese, room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups fresh blueberries
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- Combine blueberries, sugar, and lemon juice in a pan over medium-high heat. Cook until berries burst and release juices. (Use your spatula or spoon to gently smoosh some of your berries to release more juices.)
- Allow berry mixture to simmer for a few minutes, until mixture thickens. Remove pan from heat, pour mixture into a bowl, and stick your bowl in the fridge to chill.
- In a large bowl, beat your cream cheese with an electric mixer until smooth.
- If you’re not already using them, change your mixer attachments to use whisk attachments.
- Slowly add condensed milk and vanilla, and whisk mixture until smooth.
- Add heavy cream and keep whisking until stiff peaks form. (This will take longer than usual b/c of all the other ingredients. Be patient and keep whisking!)
- Spoon about half of your whipped cream mixture into a standard sized loaf pan.
- Remove your chilled berry sauce from the fridge and spoon about half of it over your whipped cream mixture in the loaf pan. (Drop blobs of sauce in spoonfuls over the top of the cream. Doesn’t have to be pretty.)
- Cover with your remaining whipped cream mixture, and top with your remaining berry mixture.
- Use a butter knife to drag/swirl your blueberry mixture into your cream mixture.
- Cover pan tightly with aluminum foil, and stick it in the freezer for about 6 hours, or until ice cream is firm enough to scoop.
- Enjoy! (Dan and I really liked our ice cream in a bowl, with crushed up waffle cone pieces.)
(Barely adapted from Kitchen Simplicity’s recipe)
I usually make my ice cream from heavy cream. I whip it but not until it forms any kind of peaks. It turns out custardy – and that is how we like it. I can’t wait to try this recipe. It looks so good! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading! I’ll have to try it your way next time – I definitely prefer a more custard-y texture for my ice cream.
I have tried several recipes with this same base, they are all a bit stiff, but super yummy. This weekend I made one with honey and roasted almonds, but instead of heavy whipping cream, i used plain whipping cream. It took longer to get peaks, but the texture and end result are much smoother. What is left over, 3 days later is still soft.
Thanks for letting me know! I’ll have to give that a try, since I prefer softer ice cream myself 🙂
That is some gorgeous looking ice cream. Happy belated birthday! Btw, it looks like you do have all the ingredients for your ice cream maker. The ones I make always use the heavy cream as the base (I haven’t had the patience for the custard ones and the non custard ones taste good too).
Thanks! My birthday is actually tomorrow so you’re early! Good to know about the ingredients thing – all the other recipes I looked at called for whole milk, which I never buy so I skipped over those. Will definitely have to bust out the machine soon though 🙂
This looks absolutely delicious! I love that you don’t need an ice cream maker machine for this, since I don’t own one! Now I really have no excuse not to make this, and blueberries are such a good idea too!
Thanks! Let me know how this turns out for you 🙂
If you like softer and smoother ice cream, I find that using a bit of alcohol like rum or extracts helps, as alcohol doesn’t freeze. I make Nutella Ice Cream for my fiance and I a lot. One time, I forgot to add in the rum, and there was a huge difference! It was still tasty, but the texture was a bit too stiff for my liking.
Great idea! I’ll have to try that next, thanks 🙂
Definitely add alcohol – I made an amazing coffee ice cream using Kahlua as well; rule of thumb for me is to add three tablespoons of whatever alcohol I’m using. I’m thinking maybe amaretto with the blueberry cheesecake which I’ll be making this week.
I made this recipe this morning and its been in the freezer about 7 hours, the flavor is wonderful but the texture is slightly gritty. Any suggestions?? I used regular whipping cream from Trader Joes rather than Heavy so maybe that changed it, also the cream cheese was 1/3 reduced fat and the sweetened condenses milk was organic, think either of those changed consistency? I made it this weekend to try out before making next weekend for family at Mothers Day get together, would love to perfect it by then! Can you tell me approx how long you whisked yours to get the stiff peaks and if you do it in medium or high? Thank you!!
Hmmm, I’m really not sure. I think it’s definitely possible that different ingredients can create different textures. In general low fat cream cheeses are slightly less smooth/rich, aren’t they? I don’t think regular whipping cream caused it — one of my other readers said she uses that instead of heavy and the ice cream turns out nice and soft. Not sure about the organic condensed milk…I’ve never tried that before, so I’m not familiar with the consistency. Maybe try using regular cream cheese next time and see if that helps? In terms of whisking, I didn’t time it but I remember it taking longer than usual…maybe 3-5 minutes? And actually I always set my beater on the lowest setting, but it’s crazy fast (I think it may be broken), so I think you’re safe with medium or high. I would actually suggest that you try stopping at soft peaks; I made a batch of strawberry ice cream last weekend with soft peaks vs. stiff, and I feel like the texture was a little smoother. Hope that helps!
The blueberry ice cream is stunning! I recently made lavender ice cream with lots of vanilla bean. It was a dreary tan color and I added a touch of food color to achieve a pale lavender. Sometimes there is a time and place to use a bit of food coloring! But your blueberry ice cream is just intoxicating! My husband adores blueberries, I will have to suprize him with a bowl of your glorious ice cream!
Thank you! I’ve never had lavender ice cream before, but it sounds delicious – will definitely have to try soon!
Made this this weekend and it was by far the best ice cream I’ve ever made. Since cream cheese comes in 8oz bricks, I used the whole 8oz. Didn’t seem to be any problem with this change. We consumed the ice cream after a 6 hour stay in the freezer and the mixture was sublime. The husband said that the texture, after the 6 hour freeze, reminded him of gelato in Italy. It hadn’t frozen hard yet. The texture was so soft and silky. Delicious! I’m going to experiment with more seasonal fruit as the summer moves on. This base is just perfect.
Wonderful! So glad you liked it 🙂
Can’t go wrong with blueberry cheesecake, making it into an ice cream was genius. I just had to include it in my ice cream round up. Happy Fourth of July!
Thank you! Happy 4th to you too!
I made this just now and even just made (not frozen at all) the mixture tasted amazing! I cannot wait until tomorrow to try it when it is in ice cream consistency! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for reading! Hope you like the frozen result too 🙂
Wow, this looks absolutely amazing. So happy that I found this recipe and your site. Definitely will be trying this this summer (and following your blog!).
Let me know if you do try it! 😀
Tried this out, and it worked really well! Posted what I ended up with here: http://www.challahwithdinner.com/2015/06/mixed-berry-cheesecake-ice-cream-no.html and linked back to your recipe 🙂
Yummmm, your version looks amazing!
Thanks! It was delicious 🙂
My mom and I made this last night! Ended up deciding to whip to soft peaks and it did turn out custard like. First time making a no-churn ice cream and we love it! Thanks!
Awesome, so glad y’all liked the recipe! 😀
I just made this with soft peaks and it was absolutely amazing!! My family doesn’t really like soft ice cream, so freezing over night gives it a harder consistency. This recipe is great, and I’ll definitely be making this again!
Yayyyyy! So glad you liked it 🙂
I did not made ice-cream yet but i do very good blueberry jam could i had to it ?
Yup, I think that would taste great in this ice cream!
Buena la receta solo muy mala la traducción en español
Do you mean vanilla extract?
This is like the BEST ice cream in the world!! I made three quarts today. Plenty for my grandchildren that’s for sure. Thank you so so much.