Dairy Queen Ice Cream Copycat

There are so many choices these days when it comes to ice cream, but sometimes nothing beats a vanilla soft serve from Dairy Queen. Eating cones in the car has been a highlight of this summer. Nothing can fully duplicate the experience, but if you can't make it to the DQ, try the Dairy Queen Ice Cream Copycat recipe. Bonus: This is a no-egg ice cream.

Eat Right Away or Later

Dairy Queen's soft serve is one of a kind, but this recipe tastes similar. You do need an ice cream maker, but any model will work. Straight out of the maker, it will be soft and creamy like Dairy Queen with a very similar flavor and soft texture. After being frozen for a few hours, it will be a tasty copycat vanilla ice cream. Yes, it will firm up, but if you store it in a freezer bag rather than a carton, you can bring it back to soft consistency again and squeeze it out in a twirl. I tested to see how it would work after a 24 hour freeze, and here's the result! To soften, you just have to put the freezer bag of ice cream in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so.

Dairy Queen Ice Cream With a Hint of Malt

I've been sharing this recipe for years and people really do think it tastes like Dairy Queen. Recently I made some adjustments. After having a cone at Dairy Queen and getting a slight hint of malt, I added a little malted milk powder to my home recipe and it really made a difference. Now I do not think Dairy Queen puts malt in its basic vanilla ice cream as I've never tasted it in there before, but maybe my particular Dairy Queen was making someone else a malt and some malt powder got in there. Whatever the case, it gave me the idea to add malt to my home batch. Loved it!

Soft Serve Ice Cream Machine

I do not own a soft serve ice cream maker and had to do my ice cream twirls by squeezing it out of a freezer bag with the bottom corner cut off. I was only vaguely aware that soft serve ice cream machines for home use existed, but of course they do! Cuisinart has this one, which looks like a lot of fun. Unfortunately (?) my old model Cuisinart just will not break, therefore I do not have an excuse to buy a new ice cream maker. But they are out there and would probably work great with the Dairy Queen Ice Cream Copycat recipe.

A Few Ice Cream Recipe Tips

Some of these are obvious, but I wanted to throw them out there.

• Gelatin packets hold about 2 ½ teaspoons of gelatin, so you will use 1 packet.
• Do not boil the milk, just heat so that it's hot enough to dissolve the gelatin.
• Use whole milk.
• Use water (not milk) to soften the gelatin.
• For the cream, use a good brand. I used Land o' Lakes and the ice cream had such a nice flavor. Normally I'd just buy store brand cream, but for straight vanilla ice cream buy a premium brand.
• Same with the vanilla. I use Nielsen Massey vanilla bean paste. The paste adds so much more flavor than regular extract.
• Empty the ice cream directly from the canister to the freezer bag. I recommend dividing it between two or three bags. Snip the bag before serving. Keep others intact.
• Buy some ice cream cones! I didn't have any for this round and couldn't drive to the store so I used Yoplait glass containers.
• Using allulose. This is one recipe where I have not tested with allulose, but I think it would work really well combined with the sugar. Allulose isn't as sweet as sugar, so if using allulose you'll want to use 1 ⅓ times the amount. When I test, I will try ⅓ cup (65 grams) of sugar and 1 cup of allulose (200 grams).

More Updates!

• You can soften the gelatin in milk rather than water, so I've replaced the ¼ cup of water with milk.
• This recipe does not call for corn syrup, but replacing 2 tablespoons of sugar with 2 tablespoons (40 grams) of corn syrup is an option and can decrease iciness and improve texture even more. 
• If you have some good quality milk powder, try adding 4 tablespoons (36 grams).  4.
• Vanilla bean paste adds more flavor than vanilla, and this is a great place to use it.
• Instead of just mixing everything together, buzz it up in the blender. 

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Recipe

Dairy Queen Ice Cream Copycat

Anna

Not quite the same as a good old DQ cone, but will do in a pinch!

5 from 1 vote

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 5 minutes mins

Chill Time in Refrigerator and Maker 8 hours hrs

Total Time 8 hours hrs 15 minutes mins

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Servings 6 or so

Equipment

• ice cream maker

Ingredients

 

• 2 ¼ cups cold whole milk
• 2 ½ teaspoons Knox gelatin
• 1 cup sugar (210 grams)
• 1 ½ cups heavy cream
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste Nielsen Massey
• 1-2 teaspoons malted milk powder optional

Instructions

 

• Put the milk in a 3 quart saucepan. Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold milk and allow it to soften for about 5 to 10 minutes. If you're new to using gelatin, softening it just swells the granules and helps them dissolve easily into the liquid.
• Add sugar to the mixture and heat just until it is very hot, no need to boil, but it's okay if it simmers a little. Stir to dissolve the gelatin and remove from heat.
• Transfer mixture to a clean glass bowl or better yet, pour directly into a blender container. Stir in the cream, salt and vanilla. If using the blender, blend for 45 seconds. Cover and chill for 6-8 hours or overnight. I've been chilling directly in the blender container which saves a bowl.
• The next day it should be congealed like soft gelatin. It is now ready to go in the ice cream maker! Yay!
• Add to the ice cream maker along with little malted milk powder if desired. Process as per manufacturer's directions. When finished, scrape into a gallon size freezer bag or a couple of smaller freezer bags. At this point the ice cream will be quite soft, so put the bag in the freezer for another 10 minutes or so to make it less melt-y.
• To serve, snip off bottom corner of freezer bag and squeeze into cups or cones or recycled French yogurt containers.
• If you still have ice cream left, just freeze the whole bag and serve later.

Notes

Variations: This recipe is designed to be fairly simple, but if you'd like to experiment a little, you can increase the creaminess by using 2 tablespoons of corn syrup (or golden syrup) in place of 2 tablespoons of sugar. Another great addition is 3-4 tablespoons (about 32 grams) good quality milk powder. Some brands taste better than others.  Bob's Red Mill is really good. You can also experiment with different types of vanilla such as vanilla bean paste.

Keyword Dairy Queen, Soft Serve

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