Monday, September 22, 2008

Happy Autumnal Solstice!

In honor of the last school day of summer on Friday, the boys and I decided to make strawberry ice cream using a recipe given by the talented Mrs. Prudence Pennywise. This decision was not hurt by the fact that I still had 12 quarts of frozen strawberries from the boys' expeditions to the strawberry fields this summer with their sisters. Being the basically lazy person I am (translation: make enough to last another day), I doubled her recipe. This was excellent ice cream, and coming from a person who only eats vanilla ice cream (me), that's high praise indeed. I will publish the doubled recipe here, as I made it, and you can go visit Prudy to see the original.

STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM

2-1/2 cups strawberries - fresh or frozen
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp orange juice
1/2 tsp orange zest
1-1/2 cups sour cream
1-1/2 cups whipping cream

(she also called for white chocolate, but it turned out I didn't have any - SOB!)

Stir together the strawberries, sugar, juice and zest in a saucepan, and heat on the stove until the sugar is all melted and the strawberries are soft. Remove from the heat, cool slightly, and put in the blender or food processor and turn until smooth. Place these in a nice, big bowl, and whisk in the sour cream and whipping cream. Put it in the freezer; take the bowl out every half hour to stir with the whisk. Ito took about 3 hours for mine to be solid. If you are fortunate enough to have the white chocolate, after the ice cream is nearly solid, melt the white chocolate in the microwave at half power, and drizzle on the ice cream, letting it sit about 30 seconds to solidify and be stirred in before melting more. I am so distressed! My daughters must have eaten my box of Baker's white chocolate when I wasn't looking!

My husband commented that he would have liked this ice cream better if it had been sweeter, but he then proceeded to polish off a nice, big bowl of it; I very much enjoyed it, as did the boys. Word of warning, however, for those who try to make extra, as I did: it
gets really, really hard in the freezer overnight. Like, let it sit on the counter for 15 or more minutes before you even think about trying to dig into it, it's so hard. (Does ice cream made with an ice cream maker get this hard? I was thinking of getting one for my birthday, for the kids to give me, of course!) However, let me also assure you that it was still tasty!

Additional warning: if two children are "helping" with this recipe, be absolutely certain to let them each measure the same amounts of everything. Stirring is harder to split up, but my boys managed to squabble their way through it nonetheless. And if Mommy drank, this would have been the perfect time to break out the libation of choice, to assist in maintenance of sanity. There, I've admitted I'm not perfectly sane; doesn't everyone feel better now? And look at this pretty little dish of ice cream I ate. Yes, that's all I ate. Fat management, remember? Thanksgiving is coming soon!

12 comments:

Greg C said...

I have to try this. And since I have two boys I have everything necessary. I even have some wine available. :)

Christo Gonzales said...

great looking ice cream....I am all confused..do you home school?

Paula said...

Ooooh man, my kids are going to be soooo envious, and I know I'm never going to hear the end of it ... "She makes ice cream with them TOO??!!" You are so good about getting those boys involved in hands on things. Well done, Mom. And tell the boys good job, too!

The Blonde Duck said...

The ice cream looks delicious! Your boys are so cute. Come to my blog. You won an award!

Peter M said...

That's it, 2009 I get an ice cream maker. Stawberry is still one of fave flavahs!

Anonymous said...

The perfect ending to summer! Happy Fall!

Pam said...

Yum. I still haven't made ice cream this summer and it's almost fall. I better make some NOW.

Amy Bailes said...

Hi Marjie! I can feel my bottom expanding just looking at that bowl of ice cream. I tagged you for a getting to know you meme. If you would like to participate please visist my blog for the rules. Have a great day.

pam said...

What a great activity to celebrate the end of summer! My ice cream (from an attachment) seems to stay a little lighter and fluffier. But I usually remove it from the freezer at the beginning of dinner and it's perfect by the time we are ready for it. Pretty dish!

Prudy said...

So glad it was a hit!!!

Prudy said...

OH, forgot to mention that YES all homemade ice cream, maker or not, gets ROCK solid in the freezer. No stabilizers, which is a good thing, but does take a little advance prep to eat it.

Claire S. said...

I'm a bit ahead of you Marjie, I received the ice cream maker to go with my KitchenAid this past year (DH is a sweetie pie but don't tell him I said that online, he'll deny it !) and have successfully made both vanilla and chocolate ice cream - I highly recommend the attachment, it's awesome !

And yes, after attempting to dish up the first bowl and trying to figure out just what I did wrong, DH told me his Dad made homemade ice cream and it was ALWAYS rock solid...no preservatives. We just take it out of the freezer about 20min. before we're ready to eat it.