Project Ice Cream

Jericho and I received an ice cream maker for a wedding present. We contemplated exchanging it for something more practical but decided it might be fun to hang on to it. In order to make myself feel like we were worthy of the present, I decided to start making ice cream. The first venture was Strawberry Gelato that turned out surprisingly well. The second venture was Key Lime Pie ice cream, which also was a big hit. The ice cream has been so good and fun to make that I'm really jazzed about finding and making different homemade ice creams.

I decided to make a record of the most recent experiment, complete with photos. Last weekend Jericho and I went to the Raleigh Farmer's Market. Love it. Jericho had never been. It makes me feel so of-the-earth. Like I should start churning butter and making my clothes. While at the Farmer's Market, we decided to get peaches. Peaches are in season and there were roughly 10 different stands selling peaches. So we bought some peaches. What should we do with the peaches? Make peach ice cream!!

Yummy fresh peaches. Picked the day before. The recipe actually only calls for one peach but one peach looked so lonely for the photo shoot.

The previous two ice cream recipes I'd made had a milk base (gelato) and a sweetened condensed milk base (key lime pie). There were a few traditional cream/milk based peach ice cream recipes but I also found one that was a mascarpone cheese base. Mascar-what?? Basically, it's a fancy Italian cheese very similar to cream cheese, just more Italian-y (see above). It's the cream base they use for tiramisu. I had Jericho taste it while I was cooking and he said it "tastes like poo." Not true. But it's kinda weird. I was skeptical.

I creamed together the mascarpone with cream, milk and sugar. The recipe calls for 16 oz of mascarpone cheese but it's expensive so we halved the cheese and substituted it with a cream and it worked fine. (That's my pretty red Kitchenaid from my pretty husband.)

I chilled the cream mixture in the fridge while I prepped the peaches. They needed to be caramelized. How does one caramelize a peach?! I'll tell you! You score them like a mango and place on a baking sheet, douse them in honey and broil on 500 for 10 minutes. It basically just makes hot, sticky, sweet pieces of peach. The next step is to mix the peaches in a bowl with (more) honey and cinnamon. Once the peach mixture is cool, then you start the mixing (see above- that's my pretty red ice cream maker. It was the only color they had. But that's fine with me.)

And behold the finished result. It's technically called Mascarpeach ice cream with caramelized peaches and honey. I changed a few things but it still turned out really well. The cinnamon ended up being pretty potent so it mainly tastes like really creamy cinnamon ice cream with chunks of peaches. I also learned that ice cream makers like mine don't like chunks. Always add any chunky ingredients when it's done churning. It was a fun project though. I liked that it was harder than some other recipes and the mascarpone made it very creamy and rich. Let me know if you have any suggestions for my next ice cream experiment!!