Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream

I love ice cream.

My roommate and resident best friend Beth got this amazing Cuisinart ice cream maker for Christmas — the kind that doesn’t involve lots of ice and rock salt or hand churning.  The bowl that the ice cream mixture goes into is frozen beforehand, which then freezes the ice cream.  It was fantastic.  We had so much fun testing out the ice cream maker’s capacities.  We tried real ice cream, frozen yogurt, and even just poured in a liter of pop to see if it would freeze like a Slurpee (and it did!).

So at the end of the semester when we both moved out of our apartment and back to our respective parents’ houses, I suddenly found myself without an ice cream maker.  So what did I do?  Being too cheap to buy one myself, I convinced my parents that this was an essential kitchen gadget that we just couldn’t live without, and then got them to buy one.

As far as ice cream recipes go, David Lebovitz is pretty much God.  After hearing rave reviews about his book, The Perfect Scoop, from pretty much every food blog I’ve read in the past two months, I finally managed to pick up a copy while I was poking around in Williams-Sonoma a few weeks ago.  I was not disappointed!  There are a ton of recipes for ice cream, sorbet, sherbet, granitas and even other non-ice cream accompaniments, like truffles, homemade waffle cones and crepes.  I’ve only tried two recipes out of the book so far, and they both have been winners!  You’ll probably be seeing quite a few recipes from this book over the summer — I’ve already got a list of five or six more that I want to try sometime soon.  Now I just need to find people who will help me eat all the ice cream, since my little family of four can only eat so much at one time.  Any volunteers?

The first recipe I tried was for strawberry sour cream ice cream.  This one caught my eye because I love strawberry ice cream, and while I had never heard of adding sour cream, it seemed like it would make a really good flavor combination.  Macerating the strawberries brings out the fresh, sweet flavor of the berries, and the sour cream adds a nice tang that keeps the ice cream from being overwhelmingly sweet.  If you’re looking to make this ice cream a little healthier, you can use lite sour cream, which is what I did.  I wouldn’t substitute the heavy cream for milk though — it would change the texture of the ice cream too much, and you would end up with something more like ice milk.  Just think of it this way — you’ve got fruit in there, which totally makes up for using heavy cream.

Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream

Source: The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

Makes about 1 1/4 quarts

1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled

3/4 c. sugar

1 tbsp. vodka or kirsch (I used vodka)

1 c. sour cream

1 c. heavy cream

1/2 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

1) Slice the strawberries and toss them in a bowl with the sugar and vodka or kirsch.  Stir until the sugar begins to dissolve.  Let stand at room temperature for 1 hour, stirring every so often.

2) Pulse the strawberries and their liquid with the sour cream, heavy cream and lemon juice in a blender or food processor until almost smooth, but still slightly chunky.

3) Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

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