I Scream, You Scream...

When trying to decide what to do with our massive strawberry haul, the first thing that came to my mind was ice cream. When I was growing up we usually made homemade ice cream a couple times during the summer, usually for July 4th or Memorial Day, and it almost always involved strawberries. My mom would make the base from egg yolks, milk/cream, vanilla, and sugar, and we would slice strawberries until our hands turned pink from all the juices. Then I would watch my dad get the machine ready to go. We had one of those electric ice cream makers that made a gallon of ice cream at a time, and required ice and rock salt so we had to do it in the garage. It was quite the production and we treated it as such. Usually a pound cake was made to go with the ice cream and neighbors were often invited over to partake of its creamy, fruity goodness. Our ice cream always tasted better than what you could buy in the store. Or at least that’s how I remember it. (PS Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!)

When it came time to create our wedding registry last year, I was adamant about including an ice cream maker on the list. We chose one of the smaller versions that do not require ice or salt. You simply place the bowl in the freezer overnight and pour in the ice cream mix and the machine does all the work. Today was the first time we used it together (I made some chocolate sorbet once last fall by myself to surprise Jason with when he came home from being gone one weekend with mixed results) and I was really excited to try my hand at the strawberry ice cream I remembered so fondly from my youth.

I consulted David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop (which I bought for myself not long after the wedding in anticipation of using our new ice cream maker at some point in the  future) for a recipe and much to my surprise, his strawberry ice cream did not require eggs!  Apparently, there are multiple styles of ice cream—French-style ice cream uses a custard base made with egg yolks while Philadelphia-style ice cream is made with cream (and sometimes milk) but no eggs.  Most of David Lebovitz’s fruit-based ice cream recipes use the Philadelphia-style since he thinks is preferable to “let the flavor the fruits come forward without all the richness” of the French-style.  Even thought it was not the custard-base ice cream of my youth I decided to give it a shot…if for no other reason than it is a whole lot simpler to make!

Macerated strawberries, cream, lemon juice, and (the surprise ingredient) sour cream pureed, chilled and then poured into our Cuisinart ice cream freezer. In the words of Ina—“how bad can that be?!”

Not bad at all. It’s going to be a tasty summer!

Strawberries immediately after they've been tossed with sugar and Cointreau

An hour later...look a all that yummy juicy goodness!

Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream
Adapted (hardly at all) from David Lebovitz

Ingredients:
1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed and sliced
¾ cup of sugar
1 TBL Cointreau (originally recipe called for vodka or kirsch but we had neither so I went with what we had)
1 cup sour cream
1 cup heavy cream
½ lemon, juiced

1.Toss sliced strawberries with sugar and Cointreau, stirring until sugar begins to dissolve. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
2.Place strawberries (and all the ruby red liquid that comes out of them), cream, sour cream, and lemon juice into  a blender or food processor and pulse until smooth but still slightly chunky.  Refrigerate for 1 hour. Note: if you use a blender you can just place the vessel in the fridge which means 1 less dish to wash!
3.Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.