Cherry Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

CherryChocChipIceCream
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

This the kind of recipe you'll love & hate. Because most of my readers are the kind of folks that like precise recipes. But I'm telling you...ice cream is very forgiving.

I had these fresh bing cherries about to mold. Cherries just don't last long, and I'm the main consumer in our house. So one afternoon I pitted about 2 cups of them, tossed them in a pan with a little sugar (maybe 1/2 cup?), and sauteed them until the cherries had broken down and I had a syrup, but they hadn't cooked so long that they had jelled.

I put that in the fridge.

Today I took that out, poured it in my bowl, and added:

1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup sugar
Dash salt
1 cup half-n-half
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Stirred it all until the sugar was dissolved. And suddenly decided to see if Mensa Boy had left any chocolate chips. Yup, about 1/4 cup. Tossed those in.

I put it in my handy-dandy countertop ice cream maker and got this! Simply stunning!

Now here are some notes for you:

1. When you simmer the cherries or blueberries or whatever berries you are using (yes...that should have been note #1...use any kind of berries), start with a little sugar, like maybe 1/2 cup to 2 cups berries. Taste it to see if it's sweet enough.

2. You still need to add sugar to the dairy products of the ice cream recipe. I didn't do that with the blueberry ice cream last week and it just wasn't that good. The berries were sweet, to be sure, but the ice cream was just not.

3. I used the ice cream recipe for my maker, and just reduced the whole milk by 1/2 cup to accomodate the extra room needed for the cherries. But I'm thinking I actually added maybe 1 1/2 cup worth of cherries and syrup...got it? There was plenty of extra room in the maker for the extra 1 cup of stuff. In fact, that doesn't take into account the chocolate chips, either.

4. I used whole milk, half-n-half and whipping cream. But you can step down the fat content by switching whole milk for 1%, half-n-half for whole milk, and whipping cream for evaporated skim milk. TRUST ME...I do that all the time and NO ONE EVER KNOWS. I just didn't this time because I had half-n-half and whipping cream left from something else I made earlier. (don't remember. don't ask.) You can definitely trust me on this if you know me, because if you know me, you know I DESPISE low-fat and reduced-fat stuff. I like full-fat stuff. Just eat less.

I'm going to make the blueberry ice cream again and add sugar to the dairy. That was the true trick.

Oh. And. Kirsch would be nice.