Strawberry Ice Cream
With gorgeous fresh strawberries making their annual June appearance in farmers markets, there is no better time to pull out (or purchase) your ice cream machine and make a batch of strawberry ice cream.
The first thought when making this quintessential taste of early summer is to simply cut up strawberries and add them to your favorite vanilla ice cream base. The problem is, the strawberry pieces remain as separate, frozen pieces of fruit. In my research for a better method, I came upon two solutions to better incorporate the strawberries into the custard.
In one, the strawberries are mashed with a little sugar, which creates juice and softens the strawberries, preventing them from hardening when the ice cream is frozen. In the other, from the New York Times’ Melissa Clark, a strawberry pur©e is made with a just enough sugar to sweeten and lemon juice. This pur©e is added to the cooled custard which sits overnight before processing in the ice cream machine.
While both produced a very good ice cream, the pur©e version, with its ultra smooth texture and pronounced strawberry flavor was the clear winner. As an added bonus, the pur©e may be made the day you see beautiful ripe berries in the farmer’s market and frozen, just needing to defrost overnight before turning into luscious ice cream.
As with all ice creams, it’s important to let it sit out of the freezer for five to ten minutes to soften, which greatly improves the mouthfeel and taste. The strawberry experience can be elevated further by serving the ice cream with fresh sliced berries. Another nice accompaniment is a butter cookie or nut tuile.
As with any custard recipe, there will be leftover egg whites. Save them for the Italian Meringue in next week’s S’mores Tarts.
It is helpful to read the blog Making Ice Cream 101 prior to beginning the recipe for information on ice cream machines, setting up your workspace for ice cream success and cooking the custard.
Strawberry Ice Cream
| Yield: 1 quart | # of Servings: 6 to 8 |
Ingredients
1 lb ripe strawberries
¼ cup sugar, more to taste
1 tsp lemon juice, more to taste
2 cups (16 fl oz) heavy cream
â…“ cup (2.3 oz / 65 g) sugar
Pinch of salt
6 egg yolks
â…“ cup sugar (2.3 oz / 65 g) sugar
Special tools and equipment needed:
- Ice cream maker
- 3 qt. stainless heavy bottomed sauce pan
- Large mixing bowl (for ice bath)
- Medium mixing bowl or 2-qt bain marie (for the cooked custard)
- Instant read thermometer
- Blender or food processor
Pre-recipe preparations:
- Day before – if using ice cream maker with separate freezer bowl, place in freezer overnight.
- Set up ice bath
- Place all tools and equipment where they will be used. The heat-proof spatula and the thermometer need to ready by stove top. The ice bath, strainer, container for the cooked custard, and trivet need to ready on a counter.
Directions:
Making the strawberry pur©e:
- Wash the strawberries and let dry on a paper towel or clean kitchen cloth lined baking pan.
- De-stem the strawberries and place in blender or food processor with the sugar and lemon juice. Blend to a smooth pur©e. There should be 1 ¼ cups of pur©e.
- Taste the pur©e. It should taste sweet with just a hint of acidity from the lemon juice. Add more sugar a tablespoon at a time and lemon juice a half-teaspoon at a time to achieve your preferred taste.
- Set aside in the refrigerator. This can be done the day before, or two weeks before and frozen. Defrost the day before.
Making the custard (crème anglaise) base:
- Place the cream, sugar, salt in the sauce pan and stir together.
- Over medium heat, bring just to a simmer.
- Whisk together the egg yolks and sugar, just enough to thoroughly combine.
- Temper (warm) the egg yolks by gradually whisking in approximately â…“ of the hot cream.
- Whisk the warmed egg yolk mixture into the remaining cream.
- Cook over low heat, stirring the bottom constantly with a heat-proof spatula, until it coats the back of a spoon, 180 °F.
- Remove from the heat, and pour through the fine mesh strainer into the mixing bowl or bain marie.
- Whisk several times to release some heat, and place in ice bath.
- Stir the custard occasionally with a clean spatula until it cools down to 60 °F.
- Stir in the strawberry pur©e.
- Cover with plastic film and refrigerate for at least 8 hours, or overnight
- Churn the ice cream according to the machine’s directions. The ice cream will be the consistency of soft-serve when done.
- Remove from the machine container and freeze in a 1-qt. plastic container. The ice cream will harden as it sits.
- Homemade ice cream doesn’t hold as well as commercial ice cream. Enjoy within one week.
