No-Churn Soft Serve Chocolate Ice Cream Recipe

There are a lot of wonderful ways to eat ice cream. In fact, maybe every way to eat ice cream is pretty wonderful. But, there is one that always stands out as extra special: soft serve. Maybe it's just that it seems like you can't make it at home, but there is an appeal to silky smooth soft serve ice cream decoratively wound on a sugar cone that is impossible to deny.

Until now, getting yourself an order of soft serve necessarily meant leaving the house (and praying the ice cream machine was working, for once). With this recipe, we give you the tools you need to make your very own no-churn chocolate soft serve in the comfort of your own kitchen. All you need is a whisk, a freezer, and a piping bag to give it that signature look.

The base of this no-churn soft serve is whipped cream flavored with cocoa powder, a splash of vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, and powdered sugar. Condensed milk is folded in to add another layer of sweetness as well as touch more richness and body. Then it's sent to the freezer to solidify overnight. Once frozen, all you have to do is partially thaw it, knead it smooth, and pipe it into a bowl or cone. Whether or not you choose to dress it up with sprinkles, whipped cream, peanuts, and chocolate sauce is entirely up to you.

For this recipe, you will need heavy whipping cream, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, salt, vanilla extract, and condensed milk. Once you have all those ingredients together you're ready to start whipping up this tasty treat.

Add the cream, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and salt to a large mixing bowl.

Using a hand mixer, whip the cream until it holds firm peaks.

Fold the condensed milk into the whipped cream.

Transfer the soft serve mixture to a large zip-top bag and freeze overnight. Before use, allow the soft serve to thaw in the refrigerator for around 2 hours, until pliable.

When ready to serve, remove the soft serve bag from the refrigerator and carefully knead the bag until the ice cream reaches a smooth, uniform texture.

Transfer the ice cream to a piping bag with a large, star-shaped tip.

Pipe the soft serve into cones or bowls and top with sprinkles, if desired.

Seeing a beautifully twisted soft serve cone next to a traditional, scooped ice cream cone, it is immediately clear that these are two very different sweet treats. Different enough, in fact, that some restaurants are required to call their ice cream soft serve, based on how it's made. But what are the specifics that define soft serve and ice cream?

All of the different genres of ice cream, from soft serve to frozen custard and gelato to sorbet, each have their own specific makeup, ingredients, and requirements. Ice cream, for example, must contain at least 10% butterfat, according to the USDA. Soft serve, on the other hand, is largely undefined, at least so far as ingredients go. What defines soft serve has much more to do with its texture.

Soft serve is separated from other ice creams by its airiness. This unique texture is achieved both by actually increasing the amount of air worked into the ice cream as well as by employing a variety of additives such as stabilizers and emulsifiers. While these adjuncts are important to making soft serve on a large scale, this recipe shows that they are not entirely necessary to make a smooth, pipe-able ice cream in your own freezer.

There are a whole lot of ice cream flavors out there these days. It seems like every day there is a new story about a strange or exciting new way to flavor this favorite sweet treat. While we can't suggest that this recipe is suitable for every flavor (there are some pretty strange ice cream flavors out there), it should be adaptable for lots of the classics.

The simplest option would be to go with the old steadfast, vanilla. To do this, just leave out the cocoa powder, and increase the quantity of vanilla extract to taste. You can fine-tune the flavor right up until it goes in the freezer. Strawberry is another classic ice cream flavor that would work great in this recipe. Puree some strawberries with sugar and fold that into the whipped cream alongside the condensed milk. Just make sure they're pureed extra smooth so that they pipe nicely.

As for the rest of those classic ice cream flavors, plenty of them could certainly work with this recipe, though it might require a bit of experimentation and fine-tuning. Many ice cream flavors rely primarily on flavored extracts, any of which could easily be added to this recipe. Just be sure to steer clear of anything that has chunks in it, as these won't pipe well.