Ohh Strawberry!

Summer is finally here in Auckland…. and how?

Think honey dipped lemonades on golden beaches lined by the sprawling blue sea

Think candy colored sorbets in hammocks on lazy afternoons…

Think strawberries, and strawberries, and Oh! so strawberryful strawberries..

Even the mere thought of them teases the insides of my mouth with their tangy citrusy flavor and makes my tongue frolic and rollick (okay I made up that word, but you know what I mean) in their sweet flowing freshness. So when I saw fresh strawberries sitting prettily in my local farmers market after a long winter-- which makes me realize at this point that this is surely heading down  an…er.. well, an awkward path… considering that the strawberry season is still far away for many,  I am extremely (sincerely) sorry for making all the strawberry-starved northern hemisphere drool over sweet citrusy strawberry flesh dotted by pleasant surprise of gritty seeds that make the strawberry experience so gloriou- there I go again, but as I was saying, yes I am sincerely apologetic for making you drooool, perhaps you could bookmark this to read later (sheepishly)?

 But for those who are frolicking and rollicking in strawberries like me, I shall complete my strawberry tirade. So when I saw fresh strawberries sitting prettily in my local farmers market, I bought them by the pound. Now, I love my chunky strawberry smoothie to the core, I love my glass of refreshing strawberry juice after a grinding day at work, I love strawberry slices floating in my cereal every morning and of course I love nibbling strawberries straight off the bowl, but this weekend for some unknown reason, I absolutely HAD to try David Lebovitz's this Strawberry Ice Cream recipe. Although, on second thoughts, having an ice-cream feasible freezer that does not look like an igloo every other day should have been a compelling reason enough.

I have to confess, however, that I did tweak the recipe a bit even though David has pointed out the obvious fact that "If you change the ingredients in a recipe, the results will vary". The Original Recipe is for Vegan Ice Cream using rice milk but since I wanted my ice cream creamier, I used Anchor Pure Cream instead. I have also replaced the honey with equal quantity of Select Raspberry Jam. Thankfully both the changes caused results to vary for good :).

Ingredients:
450-500 g fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoon strawberry/raspberry jam
1 1/2 cup (375 ml) Pure Cream milk
2 teaspoon Tigroff Vodka (optional)

Method:
Slice the strawberries and toss them with the sugar and jam. Allow the strawberries to sit in the sugary juice for one hour to macerate them.
Puree the strawberries to the desired consistency with the milk and liquor (you might not want to liquidize the strawberries completely). Optionally the puree can also be strained to remove seeds, but I definitely think chunky strawberry Ice Cream is way better. The strawberry puree was already quite sour to taste, so I did not add any lemon juice. You can add a teaspoon of Vanilla essence if you fancy.

Freezing the ice cream:

Freezing ice cream requires a lot of patience (not the only thing I am very poor in), so after pouring the strawberry puree in a plastic bowl and placing it in the freezer (with a small prayer) at 3:30 in afternoon, I tried to kill time by making these cute cocktail umbrellas. At 4:30 my little neighbor was at the door to ask if the Ice Cream was ready, but apart from substantially thickening and forming a skating ring along the circumference, it hadn’t made much progress. We stirred it well with a spatula and back it went in the freezer. 'Dessert at 8' could NOT be strawberry Ice Cream! Below the frozen top layer there was only cream with nothing Icy about it. I whipped the Ice and Cream together again and back it went into the freezer. 

Midnight cravings were rewarded with absolutely delicious strawberry Ice Cream !

Refreshing Strawberry Ice Cream has been submitted to Sweet New Zealand for the November Round up being hosted by http://www.toast-nz.com/

 This Eggless strawberry Ice cream has also been sent to Bookmarked Recipes event for November, hosted by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes, and founded by Ruth's Kitchen Experiments

and to Priya's Every Tuesday Bookmarked Recipes Event