Strawberry Balsamic Ice Cream

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strawberry ice cream
Cool. Creamy.

The fourth of July is closing in on us here in the US, so we thought we’d get out a quick post for nearly everyone’s favorite Fourth of July treat: ice cream. Now, we’ve posted ice cream several times before, but never strawberry. And, we’re not talking about that stuff with the fake strawberry flavor you get in a store. We’re talking real strawberry ice cream. With real strawberries.

It turns out that fruit-flavored ice cream is easy. At least, according to the recipe book that came with our KitchenAid ice cream attachment. Macerate the fruit for a bit, and churn it in during the last few minutes. So, let’s put it through the Scratchin’ Central approval and rating board and just see for ourselves, shall we?

Strawberry Balsamic Ice Cream

Servings: 2 quarts
Author: Shawn

Ingredients

  • 2 cup diced strawberries
  • 1 Tbs balsamic vinegar preferably white
  • 1 Tbs granulated sugar
  • 1 batch triple vanilla custard ready to churn (see note)

Instructions

  • Combine strawberries, vinegar, and sugar in a small bowl. Stir to coat. Let stand at least 30 minutes.
  • Churn ice cream according to the manufacturer's directions. Add strawberry mixture during the last five minutes of churning.
  • Pack into an airtight container and freeze.

Notes

Here's our recipe for Triple Vanilla Ice Cream.

Ingredient discussion:

Use fresh strawberries. Why make fresh ice cream with frozen? That would just be silly. For balsamic vinegar, either use a high-quality vinegar or leave it out. Note: we won’t repeat the instructions for the vanilla custard here, because we’re feeling lazy today, but you can find all the details in our Triple Vanilla Ice Cream post.

Oh, and for the photos, we made a half batch of ice cream, as we’re testing out a new version that we think will be even creamier and tastier. Don’t worry, once perfected, we’ll share it.

Procedure in detail:

strawberries
Balsamic vinegar is an excellent compliment to strawberries, so we figured, why not?

Macerate strawberries. Place the chopped strawberries in a small bowl and sprinkle the sugar and vinegar on top. Stir everything around. Let stand at least 30 minutes. If you wish, you can stir the strawberries from time to time while the ice cream churns.

Churn ice cream. Set up your ice cream freezer according to the manufacturer’s directions and churn your custard. Pay attention, because you’ll need to estimate when you have five more minutes of churning left.

churning ice cream
The vinegar does give the ice cream a slightly odd color. Next time we’ll use white balsamic vinegar.

Add strawberries. Five minutes of churning left to go? Good, add the strawberries and let it all churn until the ice cream is frozen and fluffy.

Pack and freeze. You can serve some immediately, we wouldn’t blame you, but pack whatever is left into an airtight container and store in the freezer.

Well, we learned an important lesson: macerate the strawberries longer. The original recipe called for just macerating them during the initial churning, which we did, but we found that the strawberries tended to have ice crystals inside after freezing, giving them a decidedly crunchy texture. Since ice cream is all about creamy smooth texture, biting into a frozen strawberry isn’t the best experience. Next time, we’ll either let the strawberries sit longer to draw out more water, or we’ll cook them for a minute or two — we’ve updated the recipe with the former fix. The custard, however, was some of the best yet. But, remember, that recipe will be a separate post next time we make it. Overall, four stars.

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