The 1-Ingredient Secret To The Best Homemade Ice Cream

Hint: It's found in the baking aisle.

Homemade ice cream is a lot simpler to make than most people realize. There are quite a few ways to go about it, from no-churn styles made using whipped cream and sweetened condensed milk, to a custard base spun in an ice cream maker. (You can even make ice cream from snow!)

No matter how you choose to make ice cream, with eggs or without, a cooked base or not, there is one ingredient, no matter the flavor, I always use to take my batch to the next level: vanilla bean paste. And before you shrug off this suggestion as basic or obvious, let me explain why it’s so important in ice cream, and why paste is my preference over extract.

Vanilla Bean Paste vs. Vanilla Extract

Vanilla bean paste contains the seeds of the vanilla pod mixed with sugar, extract, and thickening agents. It can be measured by the teaspoon just like extract and swapped one-for-one in most recipes.

It’s more concentrated in flavor than extract, and imparts beautiful flecks of vanilla throughout a batch of ice cream. That more concentrated flavor, especially in a simple vanilla custard ice cream base, really packs a punch and can quite drastically improve the flavor of homemade ice cream.

Where To Buy Vanilla Bean Paste

Nielsen-Massey makes one of my favorite vanilla bean pastes, which you can find at cooking stores like Williams-Sonoma, but also at Walmart or online.

Related: A Home Baker's Guide To The Many Types of Vanilla

What Vanilla Does in Ice Cream (But Also Baking in General)

Vanilla in baking is sort of like salt in cooking, although salt is equally important in baking! It acts like a seasoning, helping to punch up all the flavors in a dessert, whether coffee, chocolate, or pecan. It’s sometimes imperceptible, but vanilla is still working in the background, helping to keep desserts from falling flat.

This is especially true in a super simple dessert, like sugar cookies, where there aren't a lot of other flavors aside from vanilla incorporated into it. In ice cream, which typically only contains a handful of ingredients, like cream, sugar, and eggs, the vanilla becomes an important ingredient for helping keep the frozen treat from being bland, particularly in classic vanilla ice cream. Even in homemade ice creams with lots of flavors, swirls, or mix-ins, I like to make sure the base is well-flavored with vanilla bean paste regardless.

What About Vanilla Beans?

Vanilla beans are great, but very expensive. They will also instantly elevate your ice cream, but I tend to save them for really special occasions, like a Snowy Christmas Pavlova for Christmas, rather than regular use. Unlike vanilla bean paste, which can be easily scooped and stirred into the base, vanilla beans are typically steeped in the milk mixture and require a little bit of knife work, splitting and scraping the seeds out of the pod. It's not a huge undertaking, but paste is easier to work with.

Plus, vanilla bean paste has a longer shelf life than a whole bean, which if not stored properly will quickly dry out. Vanilla paste won’t last quite as long as extract in the pantry, but if you’re regularly baking with it, you should be able to go through a jar well before its expiration. Typically, a jar is good for about 3 years.

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