Roasted Strawberry and Buttermilk Ice Cream

Spring Social Event: Cooking the Books

It's spring, it's warm outside, it's time for Di's Spring Social Event! Every season, Di from Di's Kitchen Notebook hosts a seasonal blogging event, and invites her blogging friends to blog about a theme-chosen recipe. This event's theme is Cooking the Books and she invited us to share a dish from one of the books from our bookshelves. I selected Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream because it has been on my bookshelf since late last summer and I just made my first ice cream from it. The ice cream flavor of choice? Roasted Strawberry and Buttermilk.

I made a few slight changes to the recipe. Not intentionally, mind you, but because I have been having this problem when reading through the recipes in my cookbooks lately where I think I have read it through enough and grasped what I am supposed to do and discover later that I actually ended up doing something a little different than I was supposed to if I really had followed the recipe the way it was written. You will get my slightly adapted recipe at the end of this post. Anyway, back to the ice cream. You toss strawberries with sugar and some lemon juice and roast them for about 8 minutes. I roasted mine a few days before I made the ice cream and after they cooled I put them in the fridge.

The base for this ice cream includes a milk and cornstarch slurry and cream cheese which is combined with milk, heavy cream, light corn syrup, sugar, and buttermilk for a wonderful creaminess. What I like about Jeni's recipes is that you don't have to let the base chill for hours. You put the base along with the strawberries in a Ziploc bag, seal it, and plunge the bag into a large bowl of ice water and let it sit for 30 minutes. After that time you pour the base into your ice cream mixer and let it churn for 25 minutes or until it reaches the desired consistency.

The end result is the creamiest and most flavorful ice cream. One of the parts of this recipe that I seemed to have glossed over was the pureeing of the strawberries which Jeni says in the intro that they never put pieces of strawberries into ice cream because they turn into hard, flavorless chunks because of their high water content. Well, not only did I put the chunks of strawberries in my ice cream, I put the whole pint of strawberry chunks in it. According to the recipe, you are supposed to puree the strawberries which flavors the ice cream. Well, next time I may try pureeing the strawberries or at least half of them, but I have been given strict orders from my husband not to change a thing because it has become his favorite ice cream in the world. It even tops Gunther's Pistachio ice cream which has been the favorite of our house for many years. If you love strawberries and cream, you will love this ice cream.

Thank you to Di for hosting another seasonal blog event. Please check out her lovely blog and see what books and recipes her other blogging friends selected.

Roasted Strawberry and Buttermilk Ice Cream

(slightly adapted from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream at Home

1 pint of hulled and sliced strawberries

1/3 cup brown sugar

Juice from one lemon

1-1/2 cups whole milk

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 ounces cream cheese at room temperature

1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt

1-1/4 cups heavy cream

2/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

1/4 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a pyrex dish (I used one of my pyrex pie dishes) toss the strawberries with the sugar and lemon juice until it is mixed well. Roast for 8 minutes or until the strawberries are soft. Let cool slightly and use right away or keep in fridge until ready to use.

2. Mix 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl until smooth. Mix the cream cheese with the salt in a medium bowl until smooth. Fill a large bowl with ice and water.

3. Combine the rest of the milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, and buttermilk in a saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a rolling boil and let boil for 4 minutes. Remove from heat and gradually whisk in the cornstarch slurry. Put the saucepan back on medium-heat and cook and stir, with a heatproof spatula, until the mixture has thickened (about 1 minute).

4. Gradually whisk the hot mixture with the cream cheese until smooth. Add the strawberries and blend well. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bag, seal, and submerge in the bowl of ice water. Let it cool for about 30 minutes.

5. Pour the ice cream base into the frozen canister of your ice cream maker and churn until thick and creamy. (about 25 minutes). 

6. Pack the ice cream (if you can keep your family from eating it straight out of the ice cream canister) into an air-tight container that can go in the freezer and press a sheet of parchment paper over the surface of the ice cream and seal. Freeze in your freeze until firm (about 4 hours).