Cooking Made Simple

With the weather growing warmer and summer knocking on our doors, we are beginning to enjoy the fresh bounty of fruits and vegetables found at the local farmer’s market. This week we were also lucky to get some wonderful leaf lettuce and a few pounds of fresh strawberries from a local client. The lettuce goes with the ham I roasted the other day to make some really tasty sandwiches, lettuce rolls (meat, cheese and veggie mix rolled up in lettuce leaves), plus salads.

As for the strawberries, some of them went into the freezer for future use, but I couldn’t resist making some homemade, sugar free strawberry ice cream. It was sooooo good! You could make this with sugar if you prefer, but for us, it has to be artificial sweetener. I am using a very basic base recipe and adding whatever flavor of the day.

The base recipe is heavy cream, half and half, sweetener and flavoring or whatever other ingredients needed for that particular flavor choice. For instance, when I make coconut ice cream, I will use part coconut milk and add unsweetened shredded coconut. This time I added a few handfuls of strawberries. Other ideas are different types of fruit or nuts. I like to use a blender to blend the fruit with the cream, and then mix it all together into a large measuring cup. I use an 8 cup measuring cup. The pour spout on the cup makes it easy to pour into the ice cream freezer. My freezer is the type with the gel canister instead of needing ice and salt to freeze it. There is an opening at the top where you can add the ingredients that you don’t want blended up, like the nuts. I pour the mix in through that hole and it freezes in about 20 minutes.

Ice cream freezers are going to be different, so simply adjust the recipe to fit your tastes as well as your ice cream maker. Here are some tips to help make great ice cream:

* Mix up the ingredients and then put them into the refrigerator for a number of hours or overnight as cold mix will freeze faster.

* Use fresh ingredients. Nothing can spoil your anticipated ice cream faster than bad ingredients.

* The higher the fat content, the less ice crystals you will get. I use heavy cream and half & half, which results in a really nice and smooth ice cream.

* Homemade ice cream doesn’t have all of the junk added in that store bought has, so it wont have the same consistency and smoothness.

* Use your imagination! Try different ingredients and find what you and your family like best.

* Be careful of how much sweetener or sugar you add. Taste a bit as you go so that it doesn’t get too sweet or a sweetener aftertaste. Fruit and/or sugar free flavored syrups will go far to sweeten without adding a lot of extra sweetener.

* If you like, stop the freezer shortly before it is frozen all the way, and have shakes instead of ice cream. Tasty and refreshing either way!

If you have a favorite or unusual flavor of ice cream that you love, let me know what it is, and maybe we will give it a try and post it here on the blog! I wont be trying anything too weird or gross though. No fish or bugs or anything like that! : o)

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