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!