It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t like this.—Stardew Valley item description for ice cream
(Player),This recipe of mine won 1st place in a cooking competition! I hope you like it. Thanks for being a friend!
—Jodi
It won Jodi first place in a cooking competition. It’s one of Demetrius’s favorite gifts to receive. It’s a treat that almost every character in the game enjoys (except for a few and we’re not naming names). It’s: ice cream!
Who doesn’t love ice cream, really?
In Stardew Valley, you don’t get just a regular old ice cream cone either. The icon has three different colored ice cream scoops, with pink on the top, green in the middle, and white on the bottom. The flavors I picked for each scoop are based off my own tastes, have a similar color palette to the one in-game, and all pair well when eaten together. Each flavor also shows off a different method for making ice cream.
Traditional Strawberry Ice Cream
The first flavor I made was strawberry, meant to match the pink ice cream scoop on top. This one wasn’t too hard to figure out as strawberries are part of the game, although they’re not used in any cooking recipes. Strawberry is also a classic ice cream flavor.
The method used to make this ice cream is inspired by traditional custard bases that use egg yolks to both stabilize and enrich the final product. Unfortunately it requires an ice cream machine to properly churn the base and add air content (also called overrun) to produce the fluffiness we associate with this kind of frozen dessert. This is still probably my favorite method to use as it comes out rich, creamy, and flawless practically every time.
If you want to learn how to make this ice cream, click here!
No-machine Matcha Lime Ice Cream
The middle green scoop is matcha lime, a strong and summery combination. While no particularly strong evidence for matcha or lime exists in this universe, lemons are mentioned in other recipes and you can receive a tea set during the Feast of the Winter Star. The tea set seems to imply some kind of tea consumption and citrus is clearly part of the world building. In the end it’s a fun and unusual pairing that is delicious with the other two flavors.
**Editor’s Note: Green tea is officially a product you can make starting with patch 1.4, so I guess this ice cream flavor is canon now!
It’s also a bit easier and less costly to make than the first recipe because all you need is some kind of hand or stand mixer, which most people have. You could even do this by hand with a whisk if you have a strong arm and strong motivation!
And best of all there are only two ingredients for the base: heavy or whipping cream and sweetened condensed milk. This time the air is added by whipping the heavy cream, instead of churning custard. The main drawback to this method is you don’t get quite as complex a flavor as when using the traditional way; however, if you want ice cream faster and with fewer steps, this is still the better way to go.
If you want to learn how to make this no-machine ice cream, click here!
Dairy-free Coconut Vanilla Ice Cream
The bottom white scoop is a combination of coconut and vanilla. Coconuts are abundant throughout the Calico Desert near the player’s home of Pelican Town, so it makes sense to use them as a base for non-dairy ice cream. There is, however, much less evidence of vanilla use in Stardew Valley. The only time it’s really mentioned is in a painting called Vanilla Villa. Despite the minimal mention I decided to use it in the ice cream because it tastes great with coconut and the other flavors mentioned here.
The ice cream method requires an ice cream machine for churning but no animal dairy; with minimal tweaking it’s easy to make vegan and perfect for those allergic to milk and cream. It does require a bit of effort and either a hand or stand blender to recombine the coconut fat into the liquid, but the payoff is something remarkably close to soft-serve ice cream.
If you’d like to learn how to make this dairy-free ice cream, click here!
Experiment!
Pick whichever style you want to try and master first. Once you find one you like, feel free to mix and match the flavors and maybe even the styles! Or better yet, be adventurous and create your own perfect ice cream!
What’s your favorite kind of ice cream? Let me know in a comment and consider checking out my Patreon if you want to support the blog and see more!
