Strawberry Ice Cream

I've been on a bit of an Annie's Eats fix lately, first with the chocolate cake, then oatmeal cream pies, and now on to strawberry ice-cream. Emily sent me the link for this recipe, with a note about how awesome it was to find a homemade ice cream that doesn't require all the usual cooking steps.  Annie must be someone pretty special if my daughter is going to trust her to a recipe that you can prepare without having to spend all day in the kitchen.

If I were buying my ice cream at the store, strawberry is not a flavor I'd choose. In fact, I rejoiced the day when dairy folks got smart and finally created a neapolitan that excluded the pink stuff to make more room for vanilla and CHOCOLATE! No more creative scooping to purposely avoid strawberry, while piling on disproportionate amounts of chocolate.

Even I can, however, recognize the difference between a generic, store-bought strawberry versus using fresh, organic (cause Annie said so) berries mixed with rich creams to create a refreshing summer treat. Once I received Emily's email. I could hardly wait to get started on the recipe.

You know what's the hardest thing about making the ice cream??? Waiting! Thanks to the little strawberry de-stemmer I bought months ago and totally love, getting the berries ready was a snap. Hey, I love my little kitchen gadget so much that I've been known to breathe a little sigh of disappointment when all those surgically de-stemmed strawberries pile up on the kitchen counter. After this point, it's just dumping stuff into the bowl of your food processor and watching a swirly pink cream appear.

Having to wait an hour for the cream to chill was hard enough but I decided to sleep on it. Next morning when I realized I'd forgotten to have my bowl chilling for a minimum of FIFTEEN hours, I thought about throwing a fit harking back to childhood days. You know the kind - throwing yourself on the floor, holding your breath til you turn blue, beating your fists against the linoleum...whatever it takes.

At fifteen hours and one minute, the churning began and went on for 30 noisy minutes. When this stage was over, I helped myself to a big ole's spoonful of the soft-serve that was mounding up to the top of my Kitchen Aid ice-cream maker attachment. Even at this stage, the mixture was so good I could've eaten the whole bowl full, without WAITING again for the freezing process.

After all this time lapse from first inclination to try out Emily's recipe link to final, finished product, I couldn't wait one second more. Strawberry ice-cream in the morning - dreamy, creamy breakfast of champions!


Dreamy Creamy Strawberry Ice Cream
Recipe courtesy of Annie's Eats
Yield: about 1 quart

INGREDIENTS
1 lb. fresh strawberries, rinsed, hulled and sliced*
¾ cup sugar
1 tbsp. vodka or kirsch (optional)
1 cup sour cream
1 cup heavy cream
½ tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

DIRECTIONS
Combine the sliced strawberries in a medium bowl with the sugar and vodka.  Stir until the sugar begins to dissolve.  Cover and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Transfer the mixture to the bowl of a blender or food processor and add the sour cream, heavy cream and lemon juice.  Pulse briefly until almost smooth but still slightly chunky.  Chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.  Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

*Note: I highly recommend using organic strawberries for this recipe.  The flavor is worlds better than their more artificial counterparts.