Blue Berry Ice Cream

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With the time of year (berry season) and Ellen’s birthday happening, it made sense to do a quick write-up of the blueberry ice cream recipe we use.  It is egg free (Ellen has an allergy), and simplified.  Living in the village means we don’t always have access to all of the ingredients at the same time… in our case, the original recipe calls for lemon juice and lemon zest, and lemons can be hit or miss at the store (we actually started making this recipe while living in Koyuk, and lemons were truly rare then).

Recipe:

2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen work fine)

2 tablespoons water

2/3 Cup Sugar

1 ½ Cups of milk

1 Cup of heavy whipping cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

            All of the ingredients are relatively easy for us to get.  Unalakleet normally has milk, but we have also used the product Real Milk (while living in Koyuk where it was hard to get “regular” milk).  Real Milk is a boxed milk that can be stored at room temperature and therefore ships and stores easier.

Directions:

            Clean your berries.  As with any recipe that calls for fruit, your end product will only be as good as the fruit you use.  Now, that being said, I am not one of those berry pickers who goes through and takes each individual stem out of each berry.  Feel free, but I am just too lazy.

            Place the berries in a small sauce pan with the two table spoons of water.  Heat until the berries are tender and then allow to cool to a manageable temperature.  While the berries are cooking, heat the milk in a medium sized sauce pan and add the sugar.  Stir and heat this until the sugar dissolves. 

(Heating the Berries and dissolving the sugar in the milk)

    Make the berries into a puree.  We use an immersion blender, but a regular blender will work, or possibly a potato masher in a pinch

(Berry puree)

             Let it cool until room temperature and then stir in the puree, heavy whipping cream, and vanilla extract, cover the pot and place it in the fridge to chill for at least two hours (I usually just stick it in the fridge overnight and continue the next morning).

(All ingredients added before placing in the fridge)

            The solution is frozen in an ice cream maker.  We have a Cuisinart with a freezer bowl and this process generally takes about 10-15 minutes until the ice cream is nice and thick.  Transfer the ice cream to a sealable freezer container and place in the freezer to harden and to hide from your kids… oh, which by the way, don’t allow them to lick the freezer bowl afterward… a friend told me this was a bad idea.

(Add the chilled mixture to your ice cream maker, following the maker's directions)