This vanilla soft serve recipe is light, airy, creamy, and works well in the GreenPan Frost and other home ice cream machines.
What makes this recipe work is balance. Fat and sugar provide structure, a small amount of pudding mix adds stability, and vanilla bean paste brings flavor and beautiful specks of vanilla bean. This soft serve won’t turn into a drippy mess in your hands and you can even hold your ice cream cone upside down for a bite without it plopping to the ground!
I love seeing the little specks of vanilla! Not a fan of that? Use vanilla extract instead or your other favorite extracts. Add some food coloring for fun too! This is a light and airy soft serve that can be made in advance too.
Not enjoying it right away? You can also freeze the leftovers without issue for a delicious, scoop-able ice cream!
We also have a delicious chocolate soft serve ice cream recipe!
Quick Bites About This Recipe
Skill Level: Easy and beginner-friendly.
Swaps: Full-fat Oatly and Country Crock plant cream for dairy-free.
Make Ahead: Base can be mixed and chilled up to 2 days in advance.
Freezer Friendly: Best fresh, but keeps frozen up to 1 month.
Variations & Substitutions: Add a little bit of mint extract or swirl in caramel after dispensing.
Vanilla Soft Serve Ingredients
Full-fat milk: This forms the main liquid base. Full-fat is important for body and smooth texture, especially without cocoa or milk powder.
Heavy cream: Adds richness and helps the soft serve dispense smoothly instead of freezing too firm. Plant-based cream works well here too.
Granulated sugar: Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, which helps prevent iciness.
Instant vanilla pudding mix: Just one tablespoon adds enough structure for the Frost without making the base thick or gummy.
Vanilla bean paste: Provides strong vanilla flavor, visible bean specks, and a small boost in natural thickness. You can also use regular vanilla extract.
How to Make Vanilla Soft Serve
- Combine the milk, cream, sugar, pudding mix, and vanilla bean paste in a bowl and mix until the mixture is completely smooth and the sugar is fully dissolved.
- Use right away or put into an covered container and refrigerate up to 24 hours when ready to use.
- Add the vanilla soft serve mixture to the GreenPan Frost mixing bowl. Select soft serve and level 4.
- Once the ice cream is ready the machine will beep and read “cool”.
- You can now extrude your ice cream and enjoy as desired.
Storing (If There’s Any Leftovers!)
Refrigerate: Unspun base can be refrigerated for up to 24 hours.
Freeze: Finished soft serve can be frozen in an airtight container for up to 1 month.
Enjoying after freezing: Let frozen soft serve sit at room temperature for 10–15 minutes before serving.
Recipe Tips and Notes
- Chill the base thoroughly before spinning. This matters more for vanilla than chocolate.
- Keep the pudding mix at 1 tablespoon to avoid gumminess.
- A lighter texture than chocolate is normal and expected.
- Dispense immediately for the smoothest results.
Vanilla Soft Serve
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step by step recipe video
Gadget recommendation
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cups full-fat milk 420 g
- 1 cup heavy cream 240 g
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar 100 g
- 1 tablespoon instant vanilla pudding mix use up to 1 1/2 tablespoons
- 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
Instructions
- Combine the milk, cream, sugar, pudding mix, and mint extract in a bowl and mix until the mixture is completely smooth and the sugar is fully dissolved.1 3/4 cups full-fat milk, 1 cup heavy cream, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon instant vanilla pudding mix, 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
- Use right away, or place the mixture into a covered container and refrigerate for up to 24 hours until ready to use.
- Add the mint soft serve mixture to the GreenPan Frost mixing bowl. Select Soft Serve and Level 4.
- Once the ice cream is ready, the machine will beep and display “Cool.”
- Extrude the soft serve and enjoy as desired.
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Notes
- Storage: Unspun base keeps refrigerated for up to 2 days. Finished soft serve can be frozen for up to 1 month.
- Enjoying after freezing: Allow frozen soft serve to soften at room temperature for 10–15 minutes before serving.
- Dairy Free: Use full fat Oatly in place of whole milk and use Country Crock plant cream in place of heavy cream.
Nutrition
The nutritional information is automatically calculated and can vary based ingredients and products used. If the nutrition numbers are important for you we recommend calculating them yourself.
This is hands down the best vanilla soft-serve recipe I’ve tried! It completely satisfies my bougie, picky standards whenever I’m hit with a craving. Honestly, I was about to give up and banish the Frost machine to the garage.
As perfect as the original recipe is… I think I may have made it even better. Give it a try! 😊
Here are my tweaks:
1. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract – This was omitted from the original recipe, but it makes a huge difference.
2. Use Baker’s Sugar instead of regular sugar – I replaced the regular granulated sugar with the same amount of Baker’s Sugar. Note: This is not the same as powdered or confectioners’ (10x) sugar. It’s just finer granulated sugar—you can still see the crystals. My store sells it in a plastic tub.
• I believe this gives the ice cream a silkier texture. For me, mouthfeel is just as important as flavor.
3. Pre-chill your machine – This is a trick I’ve been experimenting with. We usually pour a chilled ice cream base into a warm machine, and then wonder why it never firms up enough. So why not pre-chill the machine?
• Just like I freeze my KitchenAid bowl before whipping cream, I decided to try the same concept here.
• Here’s what I did:
• I turned on the Frost machine, set to level 5 (to compensate for the empty run time), and let it run with nothing in it.
• Meanwhile, I quickly mixed the base—just a few minutes to ensure the sugar dissolved.
• Then, I poured the base into the now chilled Frost.
• It worked beautifully! The texture was so firm and incredibly smooth.
Toss those terrible recipes that came with the instruction booklet—this one is the real deal. Whether you follow the original version or my tweaked version, it’s absolutely fantastic.
Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m really glad you loved the recipe and that it worked so well for you 😊
The base recipe does include vanilla bean paste or extract, or you can use your preferred extract (go for less on mint though, haha!). We love using vanilla bean paste if you haven’t tried it yet! It’s so good, adds great flavor and those little vanilla specks everyone loves!!
Also, I LOVE superfine sugar too! I buy Imperial Sugar (extra fine granular) from my local Costco.
Awesome that Costco carries it. I will pick some up next time. Oops. I didn’t mean that the vanilla was missing. Just the amount. I see that you added an amount of two teaspoons. I’ll have to try it. But it was pretty perfect with one also. 🙂
Yes!! Sorry I went to “duplicate my recipe” and it instead changed it when I made the new one. I fixed it quickly, but I think you saw between that time. I’m so glad you’re enjoying it too!