Can you ever have too many recipes for strawberry ice cream? Hopefully not, since I think I have 3 on my blog already! This one is fairly straight forward – except for the addition of kirsch, which surely must add some taste, but I couldn’t pick it out – it just enhanced the strawberries, I think.
First off, I must tell you that the lovely ruby ice cream color in the photo up above has not been enhanced. I do own PhotoShop, and I use it all the time on my photos (cropping, lightening the whole picture, especially if I didn’t have sufficient light on the object to begin with, then inserting the text).
An aside here – do you know why I always type text on my photos? Because people steal my photos and put them on their own blogs or websites, claiming them as their own. I got really ticked off at one guy a couple of years ago who just lifted about 20 of my blog posts and recipes and plopped them all into his website. It wasn’t just the recipes, it was the entire posts. The only thing he did was add advertising within the text I’d written, and particularly in the recipes. So if it said “yellow lentils,” or “chili powder” or “ground cinnamon” he inserted a link on the words so you could go buy it somewhere. I’d suppose he was going to get revenue from manufacturers by providing buy-links. He actually told me he thought I’d be flattered that he was reproducing my stories and recipes on his website. His mistake was including a trackback link to my website (if he hadn’t, I might not have ever known). I set him straight about that in one big hurry! So generally I insert text and my copyright buried somewhere on it. Hopefully that prevents others from using them. It doesn’t prevent anyone from copying and pasting my stories someplace else. I don’t care about a lot of my photos, but the ones with text usually contain the copyright. It’s the courteous thing to do to ASK first if you can lift an entire story or a photo (and provide attribution).
Well, there, I’ve gotten that off my chest! Sorry for the sidetrack . . .
Now, this ice cream I adapted a little bit after reading the recipe over at Cheryl Sternman Rule’s blog called 5 Second Rule. She got it from a cookbook, The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making
The ice cream – well, it was delicious. It takes 2 baskets of berries to make it – and a cup of heavy cream and just 1/2 cup of half and half or fat-free half and half, which is what I used. I’m sure it must have been the Kirsch that made it different because it’s much like other strawberry ice creams I’ve made. It is a custard-type. Do mash up the strawberries sufficiently (I elaborated the directions about that because mashing them up “a bit” which is what was in the original directions, and that is definitely not enough – we had big frozen chunks of strawberry in the finished product). See the photo above – see the one whole honkin’ strawberry there on the right! My freezer keeps things at 0°, so a berry is frozen solid! The ice cream has to sit out at room temp for about 10 minutes before it can be scooped very well, too. If you have Kirsch in your liquor cabinet, you might want to give this recipe a try.
What I liked: the very-berry strawberry flavor, and the bright ruby-red color. The taste is delightful – very much strawberry. The grandkids thought it was great too. I found out our youngest grandson’s favorite ice cream is strawberry, so he was very happy! He just turned 5.
What I didn’t like: really, nothing.
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Strawberry Ice Cream with Kirsch
Recipe By: Adapted from 5 second rule blog, and she excerpted it from The Homemade Pantry by Alana Chernila
Serving Size: 8
3 large egg yolks
3/4 cup fat free half-and-half — or use the real stuff
1/4 cup Splenda Granular — (or use real sugar)
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 pints strawberries — washed, dried, and hulled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons kirsch liqueur
1. In a small bowl, whisk the egg yolks.
2. Place the half-and-half in a medium heavy-bottomed pot. Heat it over medium heat without letting it boil, and stir occasionally until the sugar is dissolved, 5 to 8 minutes. In the meantime, set a fine-meshed sieve over a large heatproof bowl.
3. When the half-and-half is hot, add the Splenda (or sugar) and stir to dissolve completely. Then whisk a little of it into the egg yolks to warm them. Then whisk all of the warm egg yolks into the hot cream. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula as you heat the mixture over medium heat—keep scraping the bottom and stirring until the mixture thickens and you get a good coating on the spoon. Again, do not let it boil. Remove from the heat and pour through the strainer over the bowl. Add the heavy cream to the mixture and stir to combine. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
4. Put the strawberries in a large bowl and mash them unil all of it is a mush (any large pieces will likely freeze as-is in the ice cream) with a potato masher. Then add the sugar. Let the strawberries macerate in their own juices, stirring occasionally until the sugar has melted, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the berries to the cream mixture. Then add the vanilla, salt, and kirsch, if using. Chill, covered, in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, but up to 2 days.
5. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.
Per Serving: 162 Calories; 10g Fat (58.7% calories from fat); 2g Protein; 15g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 110mg Cholesterol; 68mg Sodium.
Patricia fox
said on June 17th, 2017:
This recipe sounds great and I have kirsch that I dont know what to do with it. However I dont know what is half and half that you mention in the recipe. Please enlighten me. Many thanks.
Well, half-and-half is a dairy product, kind of half way between cream and milk. It’s available in nearly all grocery stories. . . carolyn t