Easy No-Churn Vanilla and Peach Ice Cream

In just 15 minutes, you can prep this frozen dessert and have delicious homemade ice cream tonight.

No ice cream maker at home? No problem. No-Churn Vanilla Ice Cream with Peaches just needs a metal bread pan and a freezer.

It’s 84 degrees today with nearly 60 percent humidity. Typical for St. Louis in July. Weather like this chases people inside to sip a cold drink or enjoy a favorite treat: ice cream.

St. Louis knows its stuff when it comes to ice cream. Ice cream cones were a popular food at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. Ted Drewes frozen custard has been a Route 66 legend for more than 80 years. Crown Candy Kitchen, the city’s oldest soda fountain, is noted for its mammoth malts and sinfully delicious sundaes. And don't visit the Hill neighborhood before stopping at Gelato Di Riso.

Other cities have ice cream stops worth visiting, too. In Jefferson City, it’s expected of any traveler to stop at Central Dairy for a few scoops of their ice cream. Betty Rae’s at the Kansas City River Market does interesting flavor combinations. In short, ice cream lovers will not be disappointed in the Show-Me State.

But sometimes, it’s fun to try your hand at making your own ice cream. I remember my family’s electric ice cream maker that Dad brought up from the basement at least once every summer. I’d sit patiently on the back porch steps while the mixture was poured into the metal bowl that was surrounded with rock salt. It was hard waiting for the ice cream to harden, but then the process was part of the fun.

I’ve no idea what happened to the old ice cream maker, but no matter. This recipe for No-Churn Vanilla Ice Cream is a fun cheat for those of us without the required kitchen gadgets. All that’s needed is a bread loaf pan, two large bowls, a hand mixer, and a freezer.

For this recipe, you’ll need just four ingredients:

• heavy cream

• sweetened condensed milk

• vanilla bean paste or extract

• a pinch of salt

Peaches, heavy cream and condensed milk are among the few ingredients for No-Churn Vanilla and Peach Ice Cream.

That’s the basic recipe for vanilla ice cream. Any mix-in can be added; I went with fresh peaches. Vanilla is added to the condensed milk in one bowl. I love the quality extracts from KC Vanilla Company The cream is whipped in another bowl. Half the whipped cream is added to the condensed milk/vanilla mixture, and then that is folded into the remaining cream. It freezes for a few hours before the mix-ins are added (if you’re doing that).

Honestly, I wondered how good this would turn out. Would it freeze properly? What would the mouth feel be like (creamy or gritty)? I’m happy to say I was more than pleased with the results!

No-churn ice cream, after freezing for about five hours, has more of a frozen custard consistency and mouth feel. It doesn’t harden like the hard-packed ice cream at a soda fountain or shop, but you will get neat scoops out of the pan.

It melts pretty quickly, so a dish rather than a cone might be the best vessel. But the vanilla flavor comes through and the condensed milk sweetens the rich cream beautifully. I’m definitely making this again.

And when I do, I’ll be sure to dice the fruit I add because the fruit obviously freezes, too, it’ll be easier on my teeth! This also is a good recipe if you have any berries or other summer fruits that are starting to, let’s say, “show their age” a bit. Cut up the fruit and toss in the cream!

Give this easy dessert recipe a try, and when you do, leave a comment about what mix-in you added. I’d love to “get the scoop” on your ideas!

Heirloom Tomato Pizza

Celebrate summer with vibrant heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil and buffalo mozzarella.

Use a ready-made pizza crust and you can have this Heirloom Tomato Pizza on the dinner table in less than 45 minutes.

When I started this website almost a year ago, I researched the top comfort food recipes; pizza was at the top of many lists. I’d rank pizza in my Top 10, and I will bet you would, too.

That’s why I had to include a summer pizza recipe this month, and I have to say, this one using heirloom tomatoes is a winner. I hope you'll give it a try.

What are heirloom tomatoes? As their name suggests, they’re older varieties of the fruit grown from seeds that have been saved and passed down through generations. These tomatoes are nearly identical to their ancestors that might go back one or two hundred years. In addition, heirloom plants use open pollination in growing cycles, allowing nature to do the work.

By comparison, many tomatoes bought at the supermarkets or farmers markets are hybrids that have been intentionally crossbred to achieve certain characteristics (and it's not always for the best flavor.)

Heirloom tomatoes can be red but also boast stunning colors (like black, purple or yellow), shapes and sizes. Often they have more intense flavors. A summertime heirloom tomato salad, maybe with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, is an exquisite taste of the season.

However, these beauties are not always easy to find. You’d likely get them at a farmers market or a specialty grocer such as Whole Foods. In St. Louis, Extra Virgin An Olive Ovation, a specialty food store that specializes in fine olive oils and vinegars, has heirlooms from a local grower. Finally, because an heirloom plant often produces less fruit, this type of tomato will be more expensive.

It's best to keep heirloom tomatoes on your kitchen counter until you use them, but don't leave them for long. (Believe me, you'll want to dig in.) Naturally, any uneaten portions should be stored in a container and put in the fridge. For more tomato-storing tips, check out this article.

For this Heirloom Tomato Pizza recipe, you’ll need:

• large tomato and 5 or 6 cocktail size tomatoes

• tomato sauce

• buffalo mozzarella

• ricotta cheese

• fresh basil

• large pizza shell

You could swap out tomato sauce with creme fraiche mixed with a few tablespoons of pesto. I also added six meatballs (either homemade or frozen), which I sliced in half. And if you just can't get your hands on an heirloom, this recipe would work with a beefy hybrid tomato from your garden or the farmers market.

If you choose to make your pizza dough, Bob’s Red Mill Flour has a good guide. The large Boboli crust worked well for me; it held up under the weight of tomatoes and meatballs. Some local pizzerias also sell dough you can take home for pizza night.

There is a good amount of moisture in a juicy tomato, so after slicing, I sprinkled salt on each slice and placed them between paper towels, leaving them to sit about 30 minutes before assembling the pizza.

Getting back to the heirloom varieties, gardeners should get to know Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Located about an hour east of Springfield, Missouri, the farm and pioneer village is open during the week. The website and free catalog showcase the wonderful variety of rare seeds that create outstanding varieties of plants. Tomato varieties include blue, green, orange, pink, purple, red, white, yellow and striped. Cherry and grape tomatoes also come in a variety of shapes and colors. Remember Baker Creek when you’re planning your gardens.

Tomatoes are the jewels of summer produce, and when we can eat them in season (honestly, is anything more sad than a winter tomato), it’s one of nature’s greatest gifts to us.

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Blueberry Dump Cobbler

This simple recipe uses a cake mix and fresh blueberries for a no-fuss dessert everyone will gobble up.

This Blueberry Dump Cobbler will serve eight people.

Dump cake, cobbler. Tomato, to-ma-toe. Let’s not trip up on words. To put it plainly, Blueberry Dump Cobbler by any name is so stinking good—and ridiculously simple. It’s essentially a dump cake (the Eleanor Roosevelt of desserts; not much to look at, but it serves a lot of people). However, it looks and serves like a fruit cobbler.

It’s understandable that a dessert involving five or fewer ingredients would be popular with busy home cooks. I was curious about the origins of this “cake”—one that requires the cook to dump ingredients into a pan and bake—and found a reference from October 1967 in several newspapers, including the Kansas City Star.

While there are oodles of variations today, the original dump cake called for a can of crushed pineapple, a can of cherry pie filling, one box of yellow cake mix, chopped pecans and butter. Like the historical Depression Cake (that made a comeback last year during COVID lockdowns), dump cakes do not use milk or eggs (but uses butter).

Most people probably are introduced to dump cakes at pot luck dinners. I know my first bite was savored at a church fish fry in my teen years. Since the 1960s, however, some dump cake recipes have been further streamlined to just three ingredients. I used an example for a Memorial Day recipe this year and shared it on Instagram (if you haven’t yet, click over and follow me for more recipes and tips). However, I thought the pie filling with the cake mix made this dessert super sweet, so I thought I’d experiment by replacing fresh fruit in my next dump cake (cobbler).

I modified a recipe by swapping out the two (21 ounce) cans of blueberry pie filling with fresh blueberries (a quart of fresh plus a cup of frozen). To the blueberries I added ½ cup sugar and the juice and zest of one lemon. Blueberries play well with lemons.

For this recipe, you’ll also need: • 1 (15-ounce) box of white cake mix

• ½ cup cold unsalted butter

The blueberries, sugar and lemon juice makes a jammy sauce that goes into the pan first. Then spread the cake mix over the berries, slice butter and tap them into the cake mix.

Small pats of butter nestle in the dry cake mix when making Blueberry Dump Cobbler.

When the cobbler comes out of the oven, let it cool for about 10 minutes so the fruit sets a little, but oh man—warm cobbler topped with vanilla ice cream is one of life’s simplest pleasures.

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