Homemade Peanut Butter Ice Cream

One of the local restaurants that we go to occasionally has peanut butter milkshakes in the summertime. After having a couple of those milkshakes I decided to try my hand at making peanut butter ice cream at home.  I have had a Cuisinart Ice Cream and Yogurt maker for several years but have never used it until now. I chose to use it for a couple of reasons: it requires no salt or ice and it makes a smaller portion than the large ice cream freezer. The counter top ice cream maker makes 1 and 1/2 quarts of ice cream whereas our large ice cream freezer makes 5 quarts of ice cream.  Unless we have a crowd, the smaller ice cream maker is much quicker and easier to use.

With the exception of the Reese’s cups I had all of the ingredients on hand.

I used Splenda instead of sugar but you could certainly use either. I also used skim milk. Notice that in this recipe  I used evaporated milk, not sweetened condensed milk, just regular canned milk.

It helps the ice cream freeze a little quicker if the ingredients are cold before putting them in the freezer. I just put everything in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before mixing. I mixed everything before putting it in the ice cream freezer so that the peanut butter would be incorporated well. The ice cream freezer takes about 20 minutes. I chopped 6 or 7 snack size Reese’s cups and added them after 20 minutes then let the freezer continue to work for 5 to 10 minutes. As you can see by looking at the photo, the ice cream is very creamy and not frozen hard. If you prefer hard ice cream you have to transfer the ice cream to another container and place it in the refrigerator freezer until it reaches the hardness that you prefer. My family is so anxious to eat it that we can’t wait for additional freezing time!

I hope that you will enjoy this recipe as much as my family has! I think I have it fixed where you can click on the recipe and print it.

I’ll be linking to Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style.