Creamy strawberry ice cream

Ripe strawberries and cream — pink, fragrant and made without cooking the fruit.

Strawberries are 90 % water, and water is the enemy of smooth ice cream. The recipe makes up for it: the strawberries first macerate in sugar, which draws out their juice and binds the water, and the base gets extra milk powder. The fruit isn’t cooked, so it keeps its fresh flavour. A squeeze of lemon juice brings out the taste of the strawberries.

Type: Classic cream ice cream · Servings: 8 · Difficulty: Easy

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 450 g strawberries (hulled weight; frozen work too)
  • 60 g granulated sugar (sucrose) (for macerating)
  • 15 g lemon juice (fresh)
  • 350 g whipping cream 33 %
  • 100 g whole milk 3.5 %
  • 45 g skimmed milk powder
  • 90 g granulated sugar (sucrose)
  • 30 g dextrose (glucose powder)

Making the mix

  1. Slice the strawberries, sprinkle with 60 g of sugar, drizzle with lemon juice and leave for 30–60 minutes to release their juice.
  2. Meanwhile, heat the milk with a third of the cream to about 60 °C, add the milk powder, the remaining sugar and the dextrose and stir until dissolved. Pour in the rest of the cream, cold.
  3. Blend the strawberries and their juice until smooth (sieve the purée if you don’t want the seeds).
  4. Mix the purée into the cream base.
  5. Cover and age in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

Method — Compressor ice cream maker

  1. Switch on the ice cream maker 5–10 minutes ahead so the bowl can pre-chill.
  2. Pour in the chilled mix no higher than the fill line (with a smaller bowl, churn in two batches) and churn for 30–40 minutes, until it has the consistency of thick whipped cream.
  3. Transfer to a chilled container, press cling film onto the surface and leave to harden in the freezer for 2 hours.

Total time: 7 h 30 min

Method — Freezer-bowl ice cream maker

  1. Take the frozen bowl out of the freezer just before use, fit the paddle and switch the machine on.
  2. With the machine running, pour in the chilled mix — no more than two-thirds full; freeze the rest as a second batch.
  3. Churn for 20–30 minutes, until the ice cream thickens. There’s no point going longer — by then the bowl has warmed up.
  4. Transfer to a chilled container and leave to harden in the freezer for 3 hours.

Freeze the bowl for at least 24 hours beforehand (until you can no longer hear the coolant sloshing inside). The mix must be thoroughly chilled.

Total time: 8 h 20 min

Method — Ninja CREAMi and similar machines

  1. Divide the chilled mix between CREAMi tubs, filling each no higher than the MAX line (a full batch makes about two standard tubs).
  2. Put the lids on and freeze on a level surface for 24 hours.
  3. Place a tub in the machine and run the Ice Cream program.
  4. If the ice cream is crumbly or powdery, run Re-spin (many users add 1–2 tablespoons of milk first).

Programme: Ice Cream

A standard tub holds about 470 ml, a Deluxe tub about 700 ml. Don’t fill above the MAX line, and freeze it level — the machine doesn’t handle an uneven block well.

Total time: 29 h

Method — No-machine method

  1. Pour the chilled mix into a deep metal or glass container (a baking dish, for example) and put it in the freezer.
  2. After 45 minutes, stir the mix thoroughly with a whisk, spatula or stick blender, working the frozen edges into the centre.
  3. Repeat every 30 minutes, 4–5 times in all, until the ice cream is thick and smooth.
  4. Leave to harden for another hour.

Without a machine you get more ice crystals and less air, so the ice cream is denser. Every stir breaks up the crystals, so don’t skip any.

Total time: 8 h 55 min

Method — Salt and ice (bucket, ball, bag)

  1. Pour about 250 ml of the chilled mix into a small zip-lock bag, squeeze out the air and seal it tightly. To be safe, put it inside a second bag.
  2. Put about 1 kg of crushed ice and 200 g of coarse salt into a large, sturdy bag or a lidded tub and mix.
  3. Bury the bag of mix in the ice, close the large bag and shake and turn it for 10–15 minutes. Wear gloves or use a tea towel — salted ice is much colder than ice alone.
  4. When the mix has thickened, take out the bag, rinse it under cold water so no salt gets inside, and serve the ice cream straight away.

Fun for children and a physics experiment too: salt lowers the melting point of ice, so the salty slush is well below zero. With a hand-crank bucket freezer, layer ice and salt around the metal canister and crank for 20–30 minutes. Children should wear gloves.

Total time: 5 h 10 min

Stages

Preparation
20 min
Cooking
5 min
Resting
30 min
Ageing in the fridge
4 h
Churning
35 min
Hardening in the freezer
2 h
Total time
7 h 30 min

Serving and storage

With fresh strawberries, a mint leaf or crushed butter biscuits. For children, in a cone.

Fruit cream ice creams are best within 3–4 days — the water from the fruit gradually crystallises. Let it soften for 10 minutes before serving.

Tips

  • Best made with fragrant, in-season strawberries. Out of season, use frozen ones — once thawed, they have more flavour than pale greenhouse berries.
  • You can dice some of the strawberries (about 100 g) and stir them in at the end of churning. Bear in mind that pieces of fruit freeze hard.
  • Raspberry or apricot ice cream can be made the same way — with raspberries, be sure to sieve the purée.

Why it works

Fruit brings lots of water and few solids, so the cream base has to be “richer”: more cream and milk powder, less liquid milk. The fructose and glucose in strawberries lower the freezing point more than sucrose does, so a little less added sugar is enough.

Sources