Baileys Ice Cream

About this recipe

To learn all about the basics of making homemade ice cream, check out my Vanilla Bean Ice Cream post. But first, let’s talk about this fabulous Baileys Ice Cream.

Any time you add liquor to ice cream or sorbet you have to balance flavor versus texture. Alcohol lowers the freezing point of ice cream. If you add too much liquor the ice cream will never freeze to a scoopable texture.

Baileys Irish Cream Liquor contains cream, sugar and whiskey (plus other ingredients that don’t matter for our purposes).

My challenge in creating this recipe was to make an ice cream that had a distinctive Baileys flavor, but could still form a nice scoop after freezing.

To balance out the recipe I reduced the amount of sugar since Baileys has sugar in it. For the first test I tried replacing all the cream in my base recipe with Baileys. The flavor was amazing, but the texture was way too soft.

Over several tests I gradually reduced the amount of Baileys and increased the amount of cream. I settled on 6 oz of Baileys for the final recipe. This amount makes an ice cream with a distinctive Baileys flavor, but it still forms a nice scoop after freezing.

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes

• Milk/Cream – Using a combination of milk and cream results in an ice cream with plenty of fat for creaminess, but enough water from the milk for the ice cream to freeze firm enough to scoop. You can use half and half in place of the milk and cream.
• Baileys – I tested this recipe with varying amounts of Baileys, from 12 oz to 6 oz. Any more than 8 oz of Bailey’s and the ice cream sets too soft. At 8 oz the ice cream is still fairly soft but is scoopable. At 6 oz the ice cream has a distinct Baileys flavor but sets firm enough to form nice scoops.
• Salt – The tiniest bit of salt rounds out the flavor of the ice cream.
• Egg Yolks – Homemade ice cream made with egg yolks has a luscious custardy texture and it melts more slowly than ice cream made without eggs or yolks.

• Combine the yolks, sugar and salt in a small bowl.
• Heat the cream and milk until scalding hot.
• Whisk the heated cream into the yolks.
• Return the mixture to the pan and cook over low heat until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spatula.

• Strain the custard back into the bowl from the yolks.
• Stir in the Baileys.
• Chill the custard completely. This can be done by setting the custard over a bowl of ice water or putting it into the refrigerator for at least 6 hours.
• Churn the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

• Churn the ice cream until it is the texture of soft-serve.
• Transfer the ice cream to a freezer safe container. Lay a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface. Cover the container and freeze at least 8 hours until firm.