Fast Freeze No-Churn Ice Cream

Three ingredients plus water to make fast & easy vanilla ice cream in 20-40 minutes, from scratch.

Oct 11, 2024

Fast Freeze No-Churn Ice Cream Melting on an Apple Crumble

🔪 The Recipe: Fast Freeze No-Churn Ice Cream
⏲️ Estimated Time: about 20-40 minutes from scratch.
💵 Cost to make: $1.90 USD / $2.61 CAD
🍽️ Servings: 1 serving
🕹️ Difficulty: Easy

How and Why This Recipe Was Created

The idea for this quick ice cream recipe came out of necessity during a stint at a restaurant with a limited amount of freezer space and a problematic, old industrial freezer.

The ice cream freezer had no external indicators, and it would often stop working, leaving us with melted ice cream instead of the firm scoops we needed. This created a constant struggle to serve desserts to guests who had already waited 10-20 minutes, while we made the dessert, only for us to discover the ice cream was unusable.

Telling the guests that we were out of ice cream often resulted in wasted desserts, unhappy customers, and likely lost business.

One sleepless night, I had an idea: what if we re-froze smaller portions directly over the freezer vents in the other working freezer? We tried it and it worked, and we saved countless desserts, and it only took 5-10 minutes!

Most of us don’t have an industrial freezer at home so it’ll take us closer to 20-40 minutes.

Nutrition Facts

Per 1 serving
🔥 232 Calories
🧈 1.4g Fat
 - 🥓 Saturated Fat: 0.2g
 - 🚫 Trans Fat: 0.0g
 - 🌰 Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.5g
 - 🥑 Monounsaturated Fat: 0.4g
🥚 Cholesterol: 0mg
🧂 5mg Sodium
🌾 47.1g Carbs
🥬 6.1g Fiber
 - 🍬 Sugars: 28.8g
💪 3.7g Protein
🍌 342mg Potassium
🦴 12mg Calcium
🔩 0.9mg Iron

Alright, let’s get into it!

🧰Equipment

1 Spice / Coffee Grinder
1 or more bowls (thinner and more heat conductive is better)

🥣Ingredients

½ cup oats
½ cup pitted dates
- OR substitute oats & dates for 1 cup of cooked white sweet potato
1 tbsp vanilla extract
½ cup water

🔪Instructions - Fast Freeze No-Churn Ice Cream

Prepare the Oats and Dates: Grind the oats into a fine flour using a spice grinder (or a blender). Coat the dates in the oat flour to prevent any sticking.

Grind the Mixture: Add half of the oat flour, then the dates, followed by the remaining oats into the grinder. Pulse about 20 times to break up the dates. Continue grinding while shaking the grinder continuously to prevent clumping and ensure a smooth blend.

Mix in a Bowl: Transfer the ground mixture into a bowl. Add the vanilla extract and water, stirring until the mixture thickens to a creamy consistency.

Fast Freezing Trick: Spread the mixture thinly along the sides of the bowl for faster freezing (thin metal bowls work best). Place the bowls in your freezer directly over a cold vent. For even faster results, divide the mixture into multiple bowls.

4A is the date-oats ice cream and 4B is using white sweet potatoes.

Freeze & Stir: Every 5 minutes, rotate the bowl a quarter turn for even freezing. After 20 minutes, break up any frozen parts and stir well. If it’s not frozen enough, repeat the process for another 10-20 minutes, continuing to coat the sides of the bowl, and rotate every 5 minutes until you reach the desired texture and firmness.

Caramel Apple Crumble with Fast Freeze Ice Cream

Enjoy! I will be posting my Caramel Apple Crumble Recipe next week which tastes absolutely amazing with this ice cream recipe so stick around and subscribe for that!

Tips

The More The Speedier: Use more bowls, or plates and spread the ice cream mixture as thin as possible.
Thin Metal: Use good heat-conducting materials that are thin to allow faster heat (cold) transfer.
Save The Skins: If you are using a sweet potato you can peel the skin and remove all the flesh and sautee the skin with vanilla and cinnamon to make a tasty crunchy ice cream topping.
Bubble Gum Flavor: I love adding a pinch of cinnamon, extra vanilla, and mashed blueberries and bananas.
Frozen Fruit For The Win: Add frozen fruit, like mashed raspberries or blueberries directly to the ice cream mix to speed up freezing time!

Updates

The new ingredients section is live with the science-backed resources for ingredients!

That being said only a handful of ingredients are added, but I will be adding and linking old articles to the correct ingredients.

I have also started on a page to store the science-based research for each disease so you can easily cite how a plant-based diet fights specific non-communicable diseases, as well as disproving myths like incomplete plant proteins, heme iron, omega-3, and other common misconceptions—all science-backed.

You can also share this link as PlantBasedProof.com/proof as I know oftentimes people often ask us to back up claims on a plant-based lifestyle, or have concerns about your protein or calcium intake etc.

A new redesign is already coming for this to make it easier to navigate and share/source: