Vanilla Ice Cream with Blackberry Swirl
A delicious flavor combo from the Antipodes!
Upon returning from his travels to New Zealand last summer, my friend Young Whan informed me that Boysenberry Swirl is a very popular ice cream flavor among the Kiwis. My first reaction to this was, “What the hell is boysenberry?” But after a quick web search, I quickly learned that it’s basically a blackberry1.
Vanilla with blackberry struck me as an intriguing flavor combination and I decided that at some point, I would try to make some at home. Well this week, we gave it a shot, using blackberries to make the swirl (because I’ve never seen boysenberries for sale in America). Here’s how it all went down!
First up, the ingredients.
I decided to make Alton Brown’s vanilla for the base because it’s quick, easy, and very good. As a reminder, the pectin in the two tablespoons of apricot preserves helps thicken and stabilize the ice cream, but doesn’t impact the flavor in any way. The process is to simply combine all the ingredients…
…To all of this, you add a scraped vanilla bean…
…And then you heat it to 170 degrees and strain it.
And that’s it. I let it sit in the fridge for about 6 hours before churning.
For the blackberry swirl, I used two different recipes from The Perfect Scoop.
For those of whom the text in those photos is too small (counting myself among that group!) it’s basically 2 cups of berries, 1/4 cup of water, and 2 tablespoons of sugar. You heat it, then strain it, and then add a teaspoon of cornstarch while whisked over heat to make it thicker, which will (hopefully) help it retain a better texture upon freezing.
I stuck the swirl in the freezer for an hour before churning so it would mix in at a very cold temperature.
Anyhoo, here it is churning, churning, churning.
I was not able to capture the process of transferring the ice cream or adding the swirl. This type of mix in requires layering, and you have to work fast to not let the ice cream melt—or perhaps I should say, I feel like you have to work fast. Anyway, I was moving fast, so I didn’t get any photos.
After it was layered and in the containers, I tasted the dregs of the ice cream with some of the blackberry sauce. It was delicious! But I didn’t want to get my hopes up until I tried the finished product. Here it is:
Okay, so the texture of the ice cream was great. And the flavor of the fresh vanilla with the blackberry swirl was out of this world. I think vanilla ice cream made with a real vanilla bean might be my favorite kind of ice cream of all time. It’s so freaking delicious!
But that swirl…it was just too thin, and didn’t stand up enough against the vanilla. I could taste it, but I had to add extra blackberry sauce to really get the two flavors in the right proportions.
I shared some with Young Whan and fam, as they inspired the flavor, and they agreed with my assessment that there should have been more of the blackberry sauce swirled in. They also noted that some of the swirl was icy (I noticed this too). Good thing I gave them some extra sauce!
Overall, I’m happy with how this came out, but would want to bring the blackberry sauce to a more jam like consistency in future iterations. Maybe I should have added some pectin or gelatin.
That’s all for this week. Don’t forget to judge the championship match and send me your votes! If you want to judge Mint Chip vs. Chocolate PB for third place, you can do that too!
Happy Wednesday evening everyone!
Technically, it’s a cross between a raspberry, blackberry, dewberry, and loganberry, but it looks very similar to a blackberry with a more reddish hue.