Nutella ice cream
Nutella by the spoonful: hazelnut, cocoa and plenty of sweetness. The jar from the cupboard turned into ice cream, no pretence about it.
Nutella is more than half sugar and nearly a third fat. That is why this recipe uses no cream and adds barely any sucrose: the jar already brings almost all of it.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·The Nutella, on the way down, at 40 °C, then blend until worked in.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Creamy and dense with hardly any added sugar: the Nutella supplies nearly all of it, and with it the fat that stands in for cream here. Cocoa and hazelnut arrive together and linger on the palate.
All about this Nutella ice cream
With Nutella in quantity, the spread does everything: it supplies the sugar, the fat and the flavour. The base is whole milk with no cream at all, and the ice cream sits on its fat target and on its solids.
The added sugar is token: a pinch of sucrose, plus dextrose and 38 DE glucose, which are there for texture and freezing point, not for sweetness. The whole still reaches its sweetness, with the serving temperature in band.
The Nutella goes in at 40 °C on the way down and is worked in with the blender: at that temperature it is fluid and disperses on its own.
The ingredients and what each does
Every ingredient has a technical job: cream brings fat and creaminess, milk powder raises the non-fat solids, the sugars set the sweetness and the freezing point, and the stabiliser controls crystal growth during storage.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
Recommended for this recipe
Equipment and ingredients that make the difference.
Ad links: we link to Amazon. We are not an Amazon affiliate in your market yet, so we earn nothing from these links.
Answers to your questions
Frequently asked questions
Other recipes
you might like
Missing a sugar?
Tick the one you haven't got and which alternatives you do have. We'll tell you whether you can make it with what's there.