Home Made Strawberry Ice Cream

Published March 12, 2014
Category: Eat It, Mandy Says

I’ve mentioned before that we have a glut of strawberries happening at our place this year. I’ve been growing them in pots for 3 or 4 years, and a good day’s picking would mean half a dozen, maybe more, and gobbled up within minutes of reaching the kitchen. If they reached the kitchen.

This year, we built a dedicated strawberry patch. I split a couple of the plants I already had, and planted about six more from my local nursery, in the hope that I’d have enough for jam in a next year or two. Wow, did I underestimated the fruiting ability of a happy strawberry! Still not getting enough in one day for that illusive batch of jam – but there’s been plenty of other recipes made. Including this one – possibly my favourite:

Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream

In the past, I’ve used a basic vanilla base without eggs for my strawberry ice cream. Since I have so many strawbs to play with this time around, I figured why not go for a traditional ice cream base using eggs (did I mention we also have a permanent glut of eggs, kindly laid daily by our eight backyard chickens?)

What You Need:

3 cups of fresh strawberries, hulled and chopped roughly into quarters. Put aside 1/2 cup to add to ice cream later.
1 ¾ cups of caster sugar. This will be divided into 2 lots – 1 cup for the strawberry sauce, ¾ cup for the ice cream base.
2 eggs.
3 cups of heavy cream.
Juice of one lemon.

How It’s Done:

Add 2 ½ cups of chopped strawberries, 1 cup of sugar and the lemon juice to a medium saucepan. On a low heat, cook until the mix resembles a slightly chunky sauce and sugar is dissolved. It’s okay to bring it to a simmer, but try not to boil. This step will take around 20 minutes. Make sure you stir frequently. Allow to cool and then refrigerate.

For the ice cream base, using an electric mixer, whisk the eggs for a couple of minutes until they become light and fluffy. Whisk in the ¾ cup of sugar a little at a time until completely combined. Then add the cream and whisk until blended. Here’s a secret – even though this mix will be at room temperature, chill it for an hour. Your ice cream machine will be so much happier you took the time to do so.

Once both mixtures are sufficiently chilled, begin churning the egg mix according to your machine’s instructions. I use an ice cream add-on to my KitchenAid machine, but there’s plenty of dedicated ice cream makers out there, ranging in price from hundreds of dollars right down to $30.

The trick is to keep the bowl in your freezer so that at any time you need it, it’s fully frozen. My machine will produce soft-serve ice cream in around 25 minutes, so I churn the egg mixture alone for half that time, and then while the machine is still running, add the strawberry mix. Once the required consistency is reached, add the reserved chopped strawberries and continue churning for a further minute or two. You can either eat now, or pour into a sealable, freezer-happy container for a further two to three hours, which will give you a great, scoopable consistency.