Strawberry Ice Cream 🍓

Finally...

It’s hard to believe it’s taken me this long to get around to making a batch of strawberry ice cream. In my defense, it’s not quite strawberry season—at least not in Lodi, where you arguably get the best strawberries. Still, strawberry is such a staple flavor that I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to finally make some. As they say, days and nights fly past, fly past…¹

But we’re here now, and so for this week, we’re making Jeni’s Strawberry Buttermilk Ice Cream.² Strawberry ice cream is a difficult flavor to execute, as the sweetness of the strawberries can overwhelm. You often need something to balance out the sweetness. That’s why you sometimes see strawberry balsamic as a flavor. I was intrigued by Jeni’s use of buttermilk in her strawberry ice cream, which seemed like it would bring some acidity to balance out the sweetness of the strawberries. Only one way to find out!³

Here’s the ingredient line up for this week:

That’s cream cheese, a staple of all Jeni’s recipes, in the silver bowl.

We should probably start by talking about that strawberry puree that’s pictured in the bottom left corner. I made it a day in advance. The recipe calls for roasting a pint of strawberries with some sugar, adding some freshly squeezed lemon juice, pureeing it, and then straining out the seeds. Here’s how that went down:

Clockwise from top left.

Once the puree is made, you begin assembling the mixture. First up, make the cornstarch slurry. Easy enough.

Then you combine the milk, cream, and sugars and bring it to a boil for 4 minutes.

Again, clockwise from top left.

After that, you slowly incorporate the slurry and boil for 1 additional minute. Then you gradually pour the hot mixture into the cream cheese (which needs to be softened to room temperature…I left it out for about 4.5 hours) while whisking so it incorporates smoothly. Then you add the strawberry puree and buttermilk, and cool it in an ice bath.

One last time: clockwise from top left.

Full disclosure: Jeni’s recipe says to use only 1/2 a cup of strawberry puree. I added about 1/4 more to give it a stronger strawberry flavor.

Here’s the churning video:

And here are the results:

You know, about fifteen years ago, I briefly worked with a guy who told me and some of our co-workers that he had never eaten a strawberry. When he said it, I assumed he was joking. When I realized he wasn’t, I was shocked. All I could think was, How could you have never tasted a strawberry? Given my own food ignorance growing up—which I’ve documented at length on this blog—you might assume I had some sympathy. But no. I did not have sympathy. I just thought he was nuts.⁴

Anyway, the reason I bring that up is that I think that guy would have liked this ice cream. Why? Because it’s really good! The buttermilk gave it a tangy taste that I very much enjoyed, and the strawberry flavor was subtle, but still quite good. In fact, the whole family enjoyed it, including my son, who doesn’t like strawberries! The texture was also good, which is not surprising since it’s the Jeni’s base + strawberry sauce.

But you know what that guy would have liked even more than this ice cream? An actual strawberry. As I mentioned at the start, achieving the correct flavor balance in strawberry ice cream is (IMHO) really hard. For me, it’s either too much strawberry flavor or not enough. I’m always left a little bit disappointed. So while this was very good (I even went back for seconds!), in my book, a real strawberry will always be better than strawberry ice cream.

That about does it for this week. See you next week, when we’ll be making an as yet to be determined flavor. Until then friends, be well!

1. Speaking of this, I was in the car the other day on the way home from a morning shopping run to Costco (where else), when Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean,” came on over the radio. It had been awhile since I’d heard it, so I looked up the release date of Stankonia on Spotify: 2000. I thought it must be an error. My mind refused—and continues to refuse—to believe that 25 years have passed since that album and song dropped. It seems impossible for so much time to have slipped by.

2. Many thanks to all the recipe blogs on the internet for providing free access to culinary intellectual property!

3. I suppose two ways: spending $12 on a Jeni’s pint at Bezos’s Market or spending even more than that to make some of my own.

4. It’s so strange how food elicits such strong reactions. It should be like: It’s just food! It’s fine if you don’t like it. Really, it’s fine! But that’s not how we humans roll is it?