Strawberry Ice Cream

Summer is approaching and there couldn't be a more appropriate way to welcome the warm weather than [making and] ravaging some homemade ice cream! I recently purchased an ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid stand mixer so I looked up "best ice cream recipe" and found something from The New York Times. I read it over and it sounded great! 

I didn't take any process photos of making the base. Just think of a pot full of cream, sugar and salt coming to a boil. That's basically it. It would have been more exciting to see the eggs temper and get added back to the pot of boiling milk, but I saved the photos for the exciting part.

Only 1 container of strawberries is needed for this recipe. It really doesn't matter if they're beautiful or not; they're all going to get massacred. Poor things.

First step, say a prayer for these beautiful berries. Then you throw some acid on them (lemon juice) to bring out some tartness.

Next is the sugar. 3 tablespoons.

It was pretty sad watching the food processor puree these beautiful strawberries. It was worth it, though. The puree was smelled very sweet and it was difficult to keep myself from sticking a straw into the bowl.

After chilling the base and the strawberry puree in the refrigerator for a few hours, it was time to combine them and make some ice cream!

My new ice cream making attachment worked like a charm! My mixture was done in less than 10 minutes!

I put it in a container and then into the freezer for a few hours. At this point, the ice cream had a soft serve texture. I couldn't wait to try it out later that day.

...2 nights later, I was finally ready to try the ice cream out! It was definitely worth the wait!

STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM

Time: 20 minutes plus several hours’ cooling, chilling and freezing

2 cups heavy cream
⅔ cup sugar
⅛ teaspoon fine sea salt
6 large egg yolks

1 lb strawberries

3 Tbs granulated sugar

1/2 tsp lemon juice or balsamic vinegar

pinch of salt

1. In a blender, purée berries, sugar, lemon juice or balsamic vinegar and salt. Taste; add more sugar and/or lemon or vinegar if necessary. Purée should be on the sweet side, with some underlying tartness. Stir into base before chilling.

2. In a small pot, simmer cream, milk, sugar and salt until sugar completely dissolves, about 5 minutes. Remove pot from heat. In a separate bowl, whisk yolks. Whisking constantly, slowly whisk about a third of the hot cream into the yolks, then whisk the yolk mixture back into the pot with the cream. Return pot to medium-low heat and gently cook until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (about 170 degrees on an instant-read thermometer).

3. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Cool mixture to room temperature. Cover and chill at least 4 hours or overnight.

4. Churn in an ice cream machine according to manufacturer’s instructions. Serve directly from the machine for soft serve, or store in freezer until needed.

Yield: About 1 1/2 pints

Recipe from The New York Times