Soft Serve Peppermint Ice Cream

December 26, 2014 by Kristi 29 Comments

This Soft Serve Peppermint Ice Cream is creamy and rich with peppermint from leftover Candy Canes!

Did you know that today is National Candy Cane day?

Are you on a sugar high from all the Christmas candy canes yet? 🙂

I don’t know about you, but with the holidays, I’m up to my ears in candy canes!

My house is like a warehouse of swirling barber poles! 🙂 I’m dizzy just thinking about it!

I had to come up with a way to use all of them. I rarely eat candy by itself, so my eyes were really buzzing at all the red and white stripes twirling around here!

I may say no to candy, but ice cream? That’s an entirely different story. I could eat ice cream all.day.long.

How about you? Are you an ice cream addict?

Those candy canes had to get to work – and it was about time to put them to good use!

Time for a little food processor action. Take that candy canes!

This ice cream (the way I made it) is definitely soft-serve. I’ve provided a link to the original recipe below if you’d rather have regular ice cream that is not soft-serve. We like both, so this Soft Serve Peppermint Ice Cream was perfect for us!

The result of the soft-serve was that I modified the recipe to use what I had on hand, and you can too. No sense wasting extra money on ingredients when you can substitute and still get the same great flavor, right?

To make this ice cream even more fun for your kids, sift the ground candy canes through a fine sifter into a separate bowl. Save the larger ‘chips’ or pieces for the ice cream and separate the candy dust. Then, just sprinkle some candy cane ‘glitter’ (a.k.a. ‘dust’) on top and tell a story about it being ‘pink pixie glitter’! It makes it magical and fun!

Happy National Candy Cane day!

Enjoy!

Soft Serve Peppermint Ice Cream

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Author: Kristi

Ingredients

1 cup skim milk *(recipe modification - see note)
½ cup heavy whipping cream *(recipe modification - see note)
¾ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
4 egg yolks
2 cups heavy whipping cream
3 teaspoons peppermint extract *(recipe modification - see note)
7 drops red food coloring *(recipe modification - see note)
1 and ¼ cups crushed peppermint candy

Instructions

Mix skim milk and ½ cup heavy cream in a medium-size sauce pan. Heat on medium heat to 175 degrees; stir in sugar and salt until dissolved. SLOWLY pour eggs into saucepan, whisking constantly. Continue to cook over low heat until mixture is just thick enough to coat a metal spoon and a candy thermometer reads 160 degrees, stirring constantly. Do not allow the mixture to boil. Remove from heat immediately.
Quickly transfer to a large bowl; place bowl in a pan of ice water. Stir gently for 2 minutes. Stir in whipping cream, peppermint extract and red food coloring (if desired). Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate several hours or overnight.
Pour ice cream mixture into an ice cream machine and add peppermint candy. Churn per manufacturers instructions until ice cream is frozen with a soft consistency. Transfer ice cream into an air tight container and freeze until the soft-serve stage.
Serve!

Notes

*The original recipe called for 1 and ½ cups of half-and-half cream instead of the skim milk + ½ cup whipping cream. I used what I had on hand, which was the skim milk + ½ cup whipping cream - which contributed to the soft-serve consistency. Also, the original recipe called for 4 to 6 teaspoons of VANILLA extract. I substituted with 3 teaspoons of peppermint extract for additional peppermint flavor. The original recipe also did not call for food coloring, but I used 7 drops of red food coloring to get the pink color. I've provided a link to the original recipe if you want a different consistency of ice cream!

Recipe modified from Taste Of Home @ Peppermint Ice Cream Recipe.