I’ve been going through my cookbook collection making a list of recipes that I’d like to try next. In one of those synchronistic moments the universe throws at you, I happened on Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream when it just so happened I had a container of blueberries patiently sitting in my fridge yet to be enjoyed. It was kismet. While I really enjoyed the results, next time I’ll try lightening this up a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not on any kind of crusade against fat content. But every person, even a die hard sugar freak has to have standards and equal parts heavy and sour cream…while it’s no where near a fried stick of butter (really America?) it certainly doesn’t endear itself to my arteries. (Although I have to admit I’d be willing to try chocolate covered bacon.) I wonder if I would have noticed or felt the same way if I were blissfully ignorant of the fat content, but as it stands it actually tasted a wee bit too fatty for me.
So next time I’ll try replacing some of the sour cream with whole milk. And don’t scoff at whole milk. We’re talking about an over 30% difference in fat content between whole milk and heavy cream. If you’re going to scoff at anything I would scoff at one or two percent milk, which is about the difference in fat content between them and whole milk. Big deal. That said, feel free to try this yourself in whatever fat version appeals to you. Now, seeing as I have a quart and a half yield ice cream maker, the paltry pint this recipe produces wasn’t going to cut it for me. Thanking God for the internets, I googled how any pints are in a quart and half. I received a response of three. Well, that was an understatement. I’m not sure who had their figures off, but tripling this recipe was too much for one batch in my machine, but only slightly too much. My advice to you if you have a machine with the same quart and half yield, just double the recipe and your machine shouldn’t have any problems churning up that amount. For the life of me I don’t know what possessed Dorie to actually list “the grated zest and juice of 1/4 lemon” as one of the ingredients. A quarter of a lemon? Seriously? Talk about scoffing, you should’ve seen me when I first read that. I just added a tablespoon of lemon juice for a triple recipe, so if you’re only doubling the recipe (which I will be doing in the future) I would do 3/4 tablespoon, or 1/2 tablespoon with a splash. Whatever, sheesh. Regardless, while I realize it’s late in the season you can still get frozen blueberries, and this would make a great treat to get a little taste of summer in the middle of the upcoming winter.
Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream
(from Baking: From My Home to Yours
1 cup blueberries – fresh or frozen (if frozen, thaw and drain)
1/3 cup sugar (or more to taste)
pinch of salt
grated zest and juice of 1/4 lemon or more juice to taste (as far as this goes as I said, with a single recipe use 1 teaspoon, if you’re doubling the recipe, just do 3/4 tablespoon or 1/2 tablespoon with a splash)
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sour cream
Put the blueberries, sugar, salt and lemon zest and juice into a medium nonreactive saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until mixture boils and the berries pop and soften, about 3 minutes.
Turn the berries into a blender and whir until you have a fairly homogeneous puree, about one minute. (It will never be completely smooth, and that’s just fine.) Add the heavy cream and sour cream and pulse just to blend. Taste and, if you’d like, add a squirt more lemon juice or a tiny bit more sugar.
Pour the custard into a bowl and refrigerate until it is chilled before churning it into ice cream.
Scrape the chilled custard into the bowl of an ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Pack the ice cream into a container and freeze for at least 2 hours, until it is firm enough to scoop.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Not only does that ice cream look gorgeous, but so does the receptacle! Where are those dainty glasses from, pray tell?
Jessica, Thanks for stopping by! I hate to tell you this, but I got them at Homegoods. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the store, or if there’s one in your area, but the inventory varies from store to store and cycles throughout the year. I could kick myself because I only ended up getting two dishes, one in this lavender color and one pink, as that was all that was left when I went back. When I first saw them there they also had them in blue and green. Why I didn’t buy them when I first saw them I couldn’t tell you, but I didn’t and missed out. That just goes to show you if you love something and have the cash for it, pick it up otherwise it will be gone. That especially goes for stuff at Homegoods. … I just did a search on ebay and came up empty. … Hmmm, Etsy seems to have a lot more than ebay (who knew?) but nine pages in the closest thing I’m seeing are some vintage pink sherbert dishes, but they’re all pink. Those are the only places I can imagine something like this might come up, but you never know…the internet is a big place
I’ve been on an ice cream kick lately, and will definitely be making this soon. I’ve yet to make an ice cream using sour cream, it sounds delicious!
Cathy, it was really good. I wonder how something like this might be with another fruit, or even try and whip up a vanilla sour cream recipe. Might be an interesting change from plain ‘ol vanilla. I hope you enjoy the blueberry though. Thanks for stopping by!