
Love soft serve but tired of waiting for the ice cream truck to show up? Make your own. Featuring just five ingredients and nothing more complicated than a handheld mixer, this simple soft serve recipe will have you piping cones all summer long.
A typical soft serve from an ice cream truck includes granulated sugar dissolved in a mix of heavy cream and milk, which is then spun in an ice cream machine to create an airy, pipeable texture. But I wanted to create a recipe that didn’t require a special machine. After a lot of trial and error, I landed on the simple solution of dissolving the granulated sugar in heavy cream, freezing that mixture until cold, whipping it until light and fluffy, then folding a teeny bit of condensed milk into it.
The condensed milk, a common feature in many classic no-churn ice cream recipes, adds silkiness and a bit of body. It will make your soft serve slightly more prone to melting, but without it, you basically just have frozen whipped cream. Delicious, but not exactly soft serve.
This is a very simple recipe, but there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind. Follow these top tips to swirl your way to soft serve perfection:
—Heat the cream with care. The purpose of heating the cream with the granulated sugar is simply to dissolve the sugar. You DON’T want to boil the cream, or even bring it to a simmer. To avoid this, keep the heat on medium and stir constantly just until you can no longer feel the grittiness of the sugar on the bottom of the pan, then remove the pan from the heat.
—Make sure the cream is completely cold before whipping. Heavy cream will always whip up best when it’s completely cold. The freezer will expedite the cooling time as much as possible. Don’t be tempted to try to cheat and whip the ice cream when it’s lukewarm. It won’t work.
—Freeze the soft serve before piping. It might seem counterintuitive, but this ice cream pipes best when it’s almost fully frozen. If you try to pipe it when it seems to be at perfect “soft serve texture” the heat of your hands and the pressure of the piping bag will melt it almost before it hits the cone. Instead, fill the piping bag with soft serve that’s a scoopable texture and let the warmth of your hands bring it up to the perfect temperature and texture while you pipe it into the cone.
Storage:
Once frozen, this ice cream will keep in the freezer, covered, for up to 2 weeks. Since it’s best piped from a more scoopable state, don’t worry about it losing its “soft serve” quality. You should be able to transfer it to a piping bag and bring it up to temperature as you pipe just as easily on day 7 as day 1.
Made this? Let us know how it went in the comments below!
Ingredients
- 2 cups
heavy cream
- 1/2 cup
(100 g.) granulated sugar
- 3/4 tsp.
kosher salt
- 1 1/2 tsp.
pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup
sweetened condensed milk, room temperature
- 4
to 6 ice cream cones (optional)
Rainbow sprinkles, for serving (optional)
Directions
- Step 1In a medium pot over medium heat, cook cream, sugar, and salt, stirring frequently, just until sugar is dissolved, 1 to 2 minutes. (Do not boil.) Stir in vanilla.
- Step 2Transfer cream mixture to a freezer-safe container (preferably plastic). Freeze until cold but not frozen, 1 to 2 hours.
- Step 3Using a handheld mixer on medium-high speed, whip cream until stiff peaks form (this will take 7 to 10 minutes). Drizzle with sweetened condensed milk and fold until combined.
- Step 4Return soft serve to freezer and freeze until firm, 2 to 4 hours more.
- Step 5Transfer soft serve to a piping bag fitted with a large star tip (if desired) and pipe into cones. Top with sprinkles (if using).

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