The very best ice cream. A really cool summer treat is this Key lime dessert!
| Prep Time: | 5 mins |
| Cook Time: | 10 mins |
| Additional Time: | 3 hrs |
| Total Time: | 3 hrs 15 mins |
| Servings: | 8 |
| Yield: | 1 quart |
Ingredients
- 2 large eggs
- 1 ¼ cups white sugar
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest
- 2 ¼ cups half-and-half cream
- ¾ cup lime juice
Instructions
- Whisk together eggs, egg yolks, sugar, lime juice, and lemon zest in a saucepan over medium heat until well blended. Continually stir egg mixture with a wooden spoon until thickened, 7 to 8 minutes. It should be thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Remove from heat, and stir in half and half until smooth. Strain mixture through a fine sieve set over a clean bowl. Cover and chill the mixture in the refrigerator, occasionally stirring, until cool, about 1 hour.
- Pour chilled mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions until it reaches “soft-serve” consistency. Transfer ice cream to a one- or two-quart lidded plastic container; cover surface with plastic wrap and seal. For best results, ice cream should ripen in the freezer for at least 2 hours or overnight.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 260 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 37 g |
| Cholesterol | 174 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 5 g |
| Saturated Fat | 6 g |
| Sodium | 50 mg |
| Sugars | 32 g |
| Fat | 11 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
It’s great, the only suggestion I have is to make 2 times the amount said. I wish I had more!
followed recipe for the most part; I did reduce the amt of lemon zest and the ice cream was delicious and not too tart. I followed advice of previous reviewer and added some small pieces of graham cracker at the end of the churn. However, the pieces were soggy in the final mixture. I suggest to crumble graham cracker pieces when serving…you get the great added flavor reminiscent of key lime pie with crunchy topping.
I make our ice cream to control my husbands sugar. Am always looking for a new yummy recipe and this one hit the spot. I did lower the sugar and it didn’t change the taste. It was very, very creamy! The flavor was so refreshing , tangy and very smooth. It is our new favorite.
This recipe was my first attempt at making ice cream. I’m not fond of cooking with eggs, so I left out the additional 4 yolks and it still turned out rich and creamy. The flavor was slightly too tart for my family’s taste so next time I’ll probably use less lemon zest. Be sure to use fresh squeezed lime juice.
Had too much of an eggy flavor
As a lemon-lime ice cream this recipe isn’t half bad. (Key limes are small and round–about the proportions of a ping pong ball–and have almost no pith. Real key limes have a distinctive flavor all their own that cannot be replicated with other citrus.)
This tasted just like the filling in a key lime pie. Next time I would only use half the lemon zest because it was a little too strong.
Superb!! Outstanding. We loved this recipe. Used 1 1/4 cup half and half along with 1cup whipping cream. Took 3 fresh limes to make the juice and then I added a splash of lemon juice to get the full amount. We will be making this again and again! As a bonus we made merigue cookies with the leftover egg whites.
I made this recipe as written, with the exception of omitting the 2 eggs, just using the yolks. The texture was beautiful ~ creamy, smooth and rich. My only issue was with the level of tartness. I would reduce the lime juice to 1/2 cup and also add a good pinch of salt.
I love this ice cream but I modified it the second time around to make it creamier and take the bite out of the tart. I used 1 cup whole milk and 1 1/4 cup half and half it turned out so creamy and it took the edge off the tartness. Love it
Came out great but only because I didn’t follow the instructions at all… Mix the egg mixture in a bowl. Bring the CREAM mixture to a boil, then slowly wisk hot cream into the egg mixture. Transfer back to the pot and heat slowly, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Cool and freeze in an ice cream maker.
Haven’t tried this yet, (thus making my rating somewhat moot, but you have to put one) but it’s next in line. I’m supposing that, since it’s key lime ice cream, key lime juice is intended. I don’t know what “half and half cream” is- I’ll try just half and half, seems like enough eggs for that to work
We really liked this ice cream. It’s really creamy and refreshing. We made a few changes. We used both sweetened lime juice (1/2 cup) and lemon juice (1/4 cup). We didn’t have lemon zest, so we omitted that. If we were to make it again, we would probably decrease the sugar by half.
I just bought an ice cream freezer and have been trying several ice cream recipes for it. This one is by far my favorite! Great blend of tart and sweet flavor. Creamy, rich texture. The only change I made was in adding crumbled graham crackers the last few minutes of freezing. It makes it tastes a little more like key lime pie and gives it a little crunch as well.
This was good but I feel it could be even better. I didn’t change anything except I only added 3 yolks instead of 4. I love tart and it was a little too tart even for me but that could be the limes I was using. Also, the final product was not as creamy as I would have liked. I’ll use a combo of half and half and cream next time. Honestly, the custard was better than the finished ice cream! I also added graham cracker pieces to make it more like pie ice cream.
Needed an ice cream recipe to use lemons from my lemon tree. Used the juice and “zest” from 4 large lemons and WOW! it was perfect! Very tangy, just like we wanted. Might try it without the egg yolks next time to see if it makes it less custardy, but for someone that really doesn’t like custard, I REALLY liked this!
Delicious! Rich, creamy and refreshing. We will definitely make this again.