Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream

July 4, 2013 Ceri

Why make ice cream at home? I’ve always wondered. There are many things that one can buy that I do like to make myself so that I know about what’s in it — granola, baby food, uh, dinner — but somethings have never struck me as worth it. Ice cream used to be on that list. But now I see the light, people. And it’s all thanks to Jenni. When I first received her book I swooned over the images and the recipes sounded delicious but I didn’t own an ice cream make so I shelved it.

Enter my new Kitchen Aid attachement — the ice cream maker! This little baby came into my life about a month ago and changed everything. Now that I’m able to actually use Jenni’s amazing cook book I took a closer book. It’s exactly the kind of cook book I love — you can either just use the recipes, obviously, or you can pour over all of the geeky, cooking-science details. Guess which I did? Jeni Bauer runs a successful small chain of ice cream shops in Ohio and is obsessed with the chemistry behind the most perfect, creamy ice cream. She pours all of this knowledge into her book and created the recipes in it with an ice cream maker a home cook might use. So the information is high tech but there’s nothing here you can’t do at home.

Photos by Maya Visnyei

Jenni’s theory is that all good ice cream depends on the annihilation of ice crystals. She also uses a touch of cream cheese in many of her bases and it gives an incredibly rich but not over powering flavour. In the recipe I tried first, she recommends that you only use a bit of your roasted strawberry puree and use the rest for other things (like pouring over ice cream!). I decided to follow her recipe exactly but then added the puree in layers at the end to make a swirled finished product.

I hadn’t tasted the ice cream when I brought it to Maya’s studio to shoot with. We worked away — ice cream can be tricky to photograph, for obvious reasons — and got all of our pretty shots you see here. Maya said, “It seems like a lot of work, do you think it’s worth it?” Then we finally dipped spoons into the container and tried it. Silence. “That,” pronounced Maya, “is the best ice cream I’ve ever had.”

Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

1 pint of strawberries, cleaned, hulled and chopped
1/3 cup sugar
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 cup whole milk
2 Tbsp cornstarch
4 Tbsp cream cheese, softened
1/8th tsp sea salt
1 1/4 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp corn syrup
1/4 cup buttermilk

Method

Preheat the oven to 375 Degrees.

Place the strawberries and 1/3 cup of sugar in a small baking pan

You don't want to use a large one as the strawberries need to be close together so they don't dry out. Toss everything around so the berries get covered in sugar.

Now place in the oven for just under 10 minutes, until they soften.

Remove from the oven and place in a blender or food processor.

Give it a quick whizz until you have a puree and then add the lemon juice.

Set aside.

In a small bowl, mix 2 Tbsps of milk with the cornstarch until they are well combined and set aside.

In a medium bowl, whip together the cream cheese with the salt. Set this aside, too.

Get a medium, heavy-bottomed sauce pan out and add the remaining milk, cream, sugar and corn syrup.

Bring it to a boil over medium heat for 4 minutes, stirring.

Take the pot off the heat and then slowly pour in the cornstarch and milk mixture, whisking it in.

Put the pot back on the burner and return to medium-high heat for another minute while stirring, until it thickens.

Now remove the pot from the heat for good.

Slowly pour the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese, whisking to keep everything nice and smooth.

Now add 1/2 cup of your strawberry puree and the buttermilk and whisk until everything is combined. I just put cling film over this bowl and placed it in the fridge overnight to chill completely.

If you don't want to wait, Jenni recommends pouring the custard into a extra large zip lock and then placing that in a bowl of ice water — that will chill it much more quickly, about 30 minutes.

Pour your completely chilled ice cream mixture into your ice cream maker and proceed according to your machine's instructions.

I place mine into the very chilled bowl of my Kitchen Aid ice cream attachment and set the paddle to a low and steady stir.

In about 20 minutes the ice cream was forming into a ball and was ready to come out.

Then the ice cream is ready to be packed into the container you're going to freeze it in. I used a loaf pan and according to Jenni's instructions, I layered extra puree, starting at the bottom, with the ice cream.

I laid down a layer of cling film and then put the whole thing in the freezer to ripen.

If you weren't adding the layers of puree you would just place your ice cream from your machine into your container and get it into the freezer to set.

Sweet Potato Chronicles