knickerbocker gloryOne of the most famous ice cream sundaes ever - the Knickerbocker Glory. Make one with a rippled ice cream if you like!

How To Ripple Homemade Ice Cream

Back in the 1960s rippled ice cream was a big favorite – as a child I remember my mother buying a block of raspberry ripple from the local store and serving it up as a special treat for the family. Then there was what I call the ‘do it yourself’ technique -  buying a vanilla ice cream cone from the local ice cream truck and covering it with ripples of strawberry or raspberry sauce. Technically speaking, that was not rippling of course - rippled ice cream is defined as a thin line of sauce or syrup put through the ice cream, not on top of it.

How to ripple ice cream in different ways ….

Homemade Ice Cream – Easiest Method
As soon as you’ve made your ice cream, scoop it into a freezing container, pour a sauce or syrup over it, seal and put in the freezer. When you remove it, scoop it again to serve and the sauce will automatically appear as ripples in the ice cream.

Homemade Ice Cream – Electric Ice Cream Maker Method
When your new batch of ice cream is ready, pad it down in the ice cream bucket and make holes in it – you can use a spoon handle or straw for this. Pour the sauce or syrup into the holes – be sure you’ve chilled the sauce beforehand – and then scoop out the ice cream into a freezing container or into dishes if serving to eat straight away.



Commercial Ice Cream Rippling
On a large scale of ice cream production where large quantities are involved, rippling is usually done by having a batch of ice cream and a separate batch of sauce or syrup going into containers simultaneously so that they mix and overlap and hence create a rippled effect.

Sauces & syrups typically used for ice cream rippling:
Raspberry sauce
Strawberry sauce
Toffee sauce
Chocolate sauce
Maple syrup

See my toppings ideas page here for more on how to use sauces and syrups as well as nuts, sprinkles etc.

Other useful pages that might help when making your homemade ice cream: how to store ice cream and when ice cream is too hard. I have researched and written about ice cream making for many years now so hopefully you will be able to find any information you need on this website. If, however, you struggle to find the answers you're looking for just check the Special Features section or use the Search box at the top of this page.

Author: Shelagh Caudle