Cream, sugar, and coffee beans over the stove, melting the day away. I love making Coffee Ice Cream from the steamy aroma to the churning of the sweet, rich mixture. Enjoy every moment of making and eating this delicious Coffee Ice Cream!
I usually like to point out how quick recipes take so you are not discouraged from trying them. But in the case of Coffee Ice Cream, the longer it takes, the better!
Mix the milk, cream, sugar, salt, and whole coffee beans in a pot and heat until the ice cream base is warm and steamy, and the aroma permeates through the kitchen and around the house. If you love coffee, the smell of that creamy coffee mixture steeping for an hour will make you want to snuggle up on the couch with a blanket and read a good book. It might be for ice cream, but it warms the soul.
I’ve always loved ice cream, so I started making my own at home. I wrote down a ridiculously long list of ice cream flavors to try, and Coffee Ice Cream was at the top of the list. Eating coffee desserts is as good as drinking coffee, so when I saw a coffee ice cream recipe on Carol’s A Cup of Mascarpone, I knew I had to make it. And oh my, this recipe made a really delicious coffee ice cream.
The step-by-step process of making coffee ice cream is almost as enjoyable as the process itself. Take your time, letting it steep slowly to infuse the coffee flavor into the cream. That’s the secret to why this ice cream is so good!
Coffee Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups whole milk
- ¾ cup sugar
- 1 ½ cups whole coffee beans (I used French Roast from Peet’s Coffee. You can use decaffeinated coffee as well)
- ⅛ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- 1 ½ cups heavy (whipping) cream
- 5 large egg yolks
- ¼ tsp pure vanilla extract
- ¼ tsp finely ground coffee
Instructions
- Before You Start…Please note that this recipe requires 8+ hours of chilling, churning, and freezing time.
- Gather all the ingredients.
- Heat the milk, sugar, whole coffee bean, salt, and ½ cup (120 ml) of the heavy cream in a medium saucepan until it’s warm and steamy, but NOT boiling. Once the mixture is warm, turn off the heat and cover. Remove from the heat and let steep at room temperature for 1 hour.
- Reheat the coffee-infused milk mixture on medium heat, until again hot and steamy but NOT boiling.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks.
- Slowly pour the warm coffee mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly so that the yolks are tempered by the warm milk, but not cooked by it.
- Transfer the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan. Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with plastic spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. DO NOT OVERCOOK (Eggs will be scrambled if you do). This can take about 10 minutes.
- Pour the remaining 1 cup (240ml) of heavy cream into a medium-size glass bowl, set on ice over a larger bowl.
- Set a mesh strainer on top of the ice bathed heavy cream bowl and pour the warm egg yolk mixture into the heavy cream. Press on the coffee beans in the strainer to extract as much of the coffee flavor as possible, then discard the beans. Mixed in the vanilla and the finely grated ground coffee. Stir until cool over the ice bath and chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator.
- Pour the mixture into ice cream maker and process the mixture in the ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions (usually about 25 minutes).
- Pour into an airtight container and freeze until firm, about 4-5 hours.
Hi, can I steep the coffee beans for overnight?
Hello, Minako! Thank you for experimenting with Nami’s recipe!
Yes, the coffee beans can be steeped. However, we haven’t tested it to see how much flavor it can extract from coffee beans.
Please let us know how it goes if you try it! 🙂
this ice cream is delicious. my mom hovered over me while making it and didn’t want me to add the ground coffee, and my dad was critical of adding full coffee beans instead of making espresso, but i politely turned them down and made it the way the recipe says. i’m very glad i did! the taste is amazing! it’s delicate but very clearly coffee-flavored and i love the light creamy texture of the ice cream. thank you so much for sharing this recipe. i’ll definitely make it again. i do have a question, though: why is it that you steep the coffee beans whole instead of making coffee and adding it to the ice cream? i’m genuinely curious.
Hi Cirrus! So happy to hear you and your family enjoyed this recipe and thank you for your kind feedback! This recipe is not my recipe, a blogger, who made the recipe from the cookbook (https://amzn.to/2DgVk6N). So I’m not sure the author’s reason why but I assume you don’t want that undesirable texture of the ground coffee beans even though you strain it? So you just extract the flavors from the whole beans… I think that’s why. 🙂
Oh wow, this is so delicious, I just made it today and even without a ice-cream maker it turned out perfect! Despite the fact that I used only a fork to stir the mixture a few times while freezing, the result is a creamy, soft and really heavenly ice-cream. Thank you for the outstanding recipe!
Hi Laura! I’m so happy to hear that! Thank you so much for trying this recipe! Glad you liked it. 🙂
I just made this today and it worked out wonderfully! I love the creamy texture and coffee flavour. It’s perfect. Thank you for the recipe!
Hi Hannah! I’m so happy to hear you liked this recipe! I now miss this ice cream and I’ll have to make it soon when the weather gets warmer. 🙂 Thank you very much for your kind feedback. By the way, I love your pictures and recipes on your blog! 🙂
Nami, I was lucky enough to stumble upon your channel on YouTube, and this is this is the first recipe of yours I have tried. I was wondering how this would turn out because some other coffee ice cream recipes I’ve seen online seem to use only instant coffee (rather than steeping the coffee, so I was wondering how much of the flavor would transfer to the ice cream).
I am glad to say this ice cream turned out to be absolute heaven. 100 out of 10. I will definitely be utilizing more of your recipes in my kitchen. Thank you so much for putting these up! Your family is lucky to have such a great cook!
Hi Bianca! Aww thanks so much for finding my YouTube channel (and even visited my blog)! I haven’t tried coffee ice cream with instant coffee so I can’t tell, but this coffee ice cream was phenomenal. Even thinking about it make me want a big scoop of the ice cream… Thanks so much for the great review! I’m very happy to hear you enjoyed this dish as well. 🙂
I love that you can see the bits of ground coffee in the ice cream! Thank you for sharing this yummy recipe!
Thank you so much for your comment! I like the bits of ground coffee too! 🙂
This recipe seems to be fantastic. I will try soon. Thank you.
Hi Carmen! Hope you will like it… I LOVE this ice cream! 🙂
Coffee is my favorite flavor!!! =) Thanks so much for posting this recipe. I love how the final ice cream even has flecks of the original product. What a perfect treat to cool down with!
Thank you Kimmi! This ice cream is so good. Now thinking about this make me drool. 🙂