Can I Use Lactose Free Milk To Make White Chocolate Ice Cream?

Our answer

Nigella's recipe for White Chocolate Ice Cream With Hot Blackberry Sauce (from NIGELLA SUMMER has a custard base with milk and eggs and then adds melted white chocolate. The custard is then chilled and churned into ice cream.

You can buy lactose-free milk, which contains lactase, an enzyme that helps to break down lactose in milk to make it digestible for those who are lactose intolerant. There is no evidence to suggest that a lactose-free milk will not thicken when made into a custard, so there is not necessarily any reason to add cornflour (cornstarch) and you would just use the 4 eggs yolks as in the recipe and replace the milk with lactose-free full-fat (whole) milk (not reduced fat, semi-skimmed, skimmed or non-fat). The addition of white chocolate to the custard base enhances the creaminess and fat content of the custard, giving it a good flavour and texture once it has frozen. However, white chocolate contains a fairly high level of milk products, in addition to cocoa butter, and varying levels of lactose. So you would need to find a good-quality vegan white chocolate to use. Milk chocolate also contains added milk products and sugar, so probably could be used as an alternative to white chocolate, but again you would need to use a vegan version to rule out any risk of lactose being introduced. If using milk chocolate, you may also like to add a teaspoon of vanilla extract to the cooked custard, as this will help with the flavour since white chocolate usually contains vanilla flavouring, whereas many milk chocolates do not. Please note, however, that as we have not tried the ice cream with these substitutes, we are unable to guarantee the results.