Homemade Pumpkin Ice Cream

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Smooth and creamy homemade ice cream made with real pumpkin, sweetened with brown sugar, and spiced with cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice. Get your pumpkin ice cream fix any time of the year with this simple recipe!

If you’re not into ice cream all year like I am, perhaps you’re wondering who the heck might want a pumpkin ice cream recipe.

But I know there are some (or maybe many) of you nodding your head right now and are dying to get some homemade pumpkin ice cream into your ice cream maker ASAP. You folks… You are my people.

Not only that, but something I love about pumpkin is that it’s available all year long, which means if I’m feeling some pumpkin cravings in the dog days of summer, I can whip up this homemade pumpkin ice cream recipe, kick my heels up on a lawn chair, and enjoy the best of both seasons at one time.

We have to tread lightly with pumpkin purée, because as we know from creating with pumpkin in the past (like, a million times), adding fresh pumpkin to a recipe brings extra moisture which can lead to extra soggy/cakey baked goods.

Though we obviously aren’t baking this ice cream, we’ll only need 1 cup of pumpkin purée to bring just the right amount of pumpkin flavor without so we can prevent overloading the ice cream base with too much liquid.

I typically go for white sugar when I make my homemade ice creams, but since pumpkin calls for a deeper molasses pairing, we’re using brown sugar in its place for this pumpkin spice ice cream recipe.

You need a few more simple ingredients for this pumpkin ice cream. Here’s the full list of ingredients you’ll need:
• heavy cream
• whole milk
• pumpkin purée
• light brown sugar
• ground cinnamon
• pumpkin pie spice
• vanilla extract
• salt

CAN I USE NON-DAIRY MILK? If you’re hoping to make vegan pumpkin ice cream, you may consider using coconut milk, oat milk, almond milk, or other milk alternative. I have not tested this recipe to accommodate these adjustments and am not at all familiar making or adjusting dairy-free ice cream recipes.

CAN I USE PUMPKIN PIE FILLING OR MIX? You’ll want to use real pumpkin puree for this pumpkin ice cream recipe as opposed to pumpkin pie filling or pumpkin pie mix. The latter are usually made with extra ingredients like spices, preservatives, and sweeteners, and you’ll want to make sure this pumpkin ice cream tastes exactly as intended. 

The ice cream maker takes care of the rest. All you have to do is stand there and watch it do its thing. Talk about a truly easy pumpkin ice cream recipe, am I right?

No but really, the best way to tell when homemade ice cream made in an ice cream maker is finished is to look for the consistency of soft serve ice cream.

I often see soft serve consistency show up when my ice cream maker starts spilling out of the top, since there’s so much air incorporated into the mixture and it’s much larger than it was when it was just liquid.

The rest of the magic happens in the freezer, and you’ll want to freeze your homemade pumpkin ice cream for at least 2 hours, but I encourage you do leave it for more like 8 hours or overnight.

You can really taste the true pumpkin complemented only by cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice, and it is perfectly sweetened by the brown sugar with a hint of that deep molasses flavor profile you can only find in brown sugar.

And I am telling you, once you start rolling with the toppings that go with fall, you’re going to want to keep making batches and batches of this stuff.

And when you do… Invite me over for a bowl, would ya?