Fresh mint chip ice cream, made with real mint leaves

Camp & seasonal kitchen · Published 2026-10-22

A hand holding a cone of pale green mint chocolate chip ice cream in front of dark ferns — Ice cream made with real mint leaves is pale, not bright green. Photo: Jarosław Ceborski (Unsplash, via Wikimedia Commons), CC0.

Ice cream flavoured with mint leaves rather than mint extract tastes greener and softer, closer to the smell of a crushed sprig than to toothpaste. It is also pale ivory, not green. Here is a reliable way to make it, with notes on food safety for the egg version.

Ingredients

What you need

This makes about 1 litre (roughly 1 quart), which fits most home ice cream machines with a freezer bowl. Check your machine's maximum capacity and scale down if needed: the mixture expands as it churns.

Custard version

2 cups (475 ml) heavy cream
1 cup (240 ml) whole milk
¾ cup (150 g) granulated sugar
2 loosely packed cups fresh mint leaves, stems removed (spearmint is the classic choice)
5 large egg yolks
A pinch of salt
115 g (4 oz) dark or semisweet chocolate, chopped

Egg-free version

Use the same cream, milk, sugar, salt, mint and chocolate, and leave out the yolks. The result is lighter and a little icier, and it melts faster, but the mint flavour comes through even more clearly. A tablespoon of cornstarch, whisked into a few spoonfuls of the cold milk and cooked into the hot base until it thickens slightly, gives a smoother texture without eggs.

Step 1: steep the mint

Mint flavour comes from aromatic oils in the leaves. You want to draw them into the dairy without the grassy, slightly bitter taste that comes from cooking the leaves hard or leaving them in too long.

Rinse the leaves, shake them dry and bruise them lightly by rolling them between your palms or tapping them with a rolling pin.
Warm the milk, half the cream and the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves and the liquid is steaming. Do not boil.
Take the pan off the heat, stir in the mint, cover and leave for 30 to 60 minutes. Taste after 30: the flavour should be clearly minty. Steeping much longer tends to bring out bitterness.
Strain through a fine sieve, pressing on the leaves to get the liquid out, and discard them.

Alternative: for a very fresh, bright flavour, steep the bruised leaves in the cold milk and cream in the refrigerator overnight, then strain and continue. This takes planning but avoids any cooked-leaf taste.

Step 2: make the custard

Raw egg yolks can carry Salmonella, and freezing does not kill it. Food safety agencies advise cooking an egg-based ice cream base to 160 °F (71 °C), checked with a food thermometer (Minnesota Department of Health, homemade ice cream). Pasteurised eggs reduce the risk further.

Pour the remaining cream into a bowl and set a sieve over it. Keep it near the stove.
Whisk the yolks and salt in another bowl.
Rewarm the strained mint milk until steaming, then pour about a cup of it slowly into the yolks, whisking all the time. This "tempering" warms the yolks gently so they do not scramble.
Pour the yolk mixture back into the saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a heatproof spatula and scraping the bottom, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula and reaches 160 °F (71 °C) on the thermometer. Do not let it boil.
Immediately strain it into the cold cream. The cold cream stops the cooking.

For the egg-free version, skip to step 3 once the mint is strained, adding the remaining cold cream.

Step 3: chill thoroughly

Cover the base and refrigerate until completely cold, at least 4 hours and preferably overnight. A cold base churns faster and freezes into smaller ice crystals, which means smoother ice cream. To speed things up, set the bowl in a larger bowl of ice water and stir for 15 to 20 minutes before refrigerating. Do not taste the egg version before it has been cooked to temperature.

Step 4: chocolate, chips or shards

Store-bought chocolate chips are designed to keep their shape in the oven, and frozen they can feel waxy and hard. Two better options:

Chopped chocolate. Chop a bar into small pieces and freeze them for 15 minutes before adding.
Shards (stracciatella style). Melt the chocolate gently, on low power in the microwave in short bursts or in a bowl over barely simmering water. Let it cool until just warm. In the last minute of churning, drizzle it in a thin stream into the moving ice cream. It hits the cold base, sets instantly and breaks into thin, crisp flakes that melt easily in the mouth. A teaspoon of neutral oil in the chocolate makes the flakes more tender.

Step 5: churn and freeze

With a machine

Freeze the machine's bowl for as long as the manufacturer specifies; most freezer bowls need to be frozen solid, often overnight. Pour in the cold base and churn until it looks like thick soft-serve, usually 20 to 30 minutes depending on the machine. Add the chocolate at the end, then scrape into a chilled container, press a piece of baking paper on the surface and freeze for a few hours to firm up.

Without a machine

Pour the base into a shallow metal or glass dish and put it in the freezer. Every 30 minutes, scrape and stir it hard with a fork or whisk, breaking up the frozen edges, for about three hours, until it is evenly thick. Fold in the chopped chocolate at the last stir. The texture is a little less smooth than machine-churned, but very good.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Likely cause	Fix next time
Grassy or bitter taste	Leaves steeped too long, or boiled	Steep off the heat, taste at 30 minutes, or steep cold
Weak mint flavour	Too few leaves, or old leaves	Use more and fresher leaves; bruise them well
Grainy, eggy bits	Custard overheated	Lower heat, stir constantly, strain
Icy texture	Base not cold enough, or slow freezing	Chill overnight; make sure the bowl is fully frozen
Rock-hard after a day	Low fat or sugar, very cold freezer	Leave out for 10 minutes before scooping

Want it green?

Commercial mint chip is usually coloured. If you want a green tint without dye, blanch a handful of spinach or mint leaves for a few seconds, cool them in ice water, blend with a little of the base and strain well. It adds colour with only a faint vegetal note. Or enjoy the natural ivory colour as the sign of real mint.

Storing

Homemade ice cream has no stabilisers, so it is best within a week or two. Keep it in a well-sealed container at the back of the freezer, where the temperature is most stable, with paper pressed on the surface to limit ice crystals.

Growing your own mint makes this recipe nearly free all summer; see how to grow and use mint.