The Ultimate Ice Cream Book’s Strawberry Ice Cream

Welcome to my kitchen disaster tale! It really should be titled “How I totally failed at making strawberry ice cream” or as the graphic says, “Strawberry Ice Cream From HELL!!!”

I had such success making chocolate ice cream from The Ultimate Ice Cream Book: Over 500 Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, Drinks, And More  that I thought, let’s try making strawberry ice cream???!!! Yay!!!

UGH

So where did I go wrong? I beat the eggs and the sugar together until it was nice light yellow and frothy.

I heated the half and half, tempered it into the eggs and sugar. I cooked it, stirring constantly until thickened. Removed it from heat, strained it and allowed it to cool slightly.

I stirred in the heavy cream, strawberry puree and vanilla. Chilled it overnight.

I put it through my ice cream maker. Then, I just had an uncomfortable feeling. Something was wrong.

When it was done, it tasted weird. We tried to eat it and it was… dry! Really crystallized, gritty, powdery and dry. Downright unpleasant. I had no idea that ice cream could be like that and it was… an abomination!!!

I was deeply disturbed by it but did not know what to do. I turned to my dessert guru Anna Olson for help. She wrote:

“… the ‘gritty’ texture you describe sounds like your fat content is too high, so the fat separates and then gives the ice cream a gritty texture when it congeals (mmm…such an unappetizing word)”

Hmm… I thought. Then I realized!!!

The recipe said I could use frozen strawberries. As long as they were defrosted and not in a syrup. They did not say whether or not to include the natural liquid of the berries and… I did not. Which meant… It was all my fault! D’oh!

The only way Reg and I could bear to have the strawberry ice cream was to mask it.

By dumping cranberry pop on top to make a float. Even then, it was meh.

At least I figured out (thanks to Anna’s help) what had gone so very wrong. By removing the volume of liquid, the fat content was way too high and man, you never want that to happen, trust me.

Foodie Conclusion

A big Suzie the Foodie fail on my part but I learned a ton. First, don’t get mad at the cookbook when you might have done something wrong. Second, once you figure out what went wrong, blame the cookbook for not telling you to include natural juices. Third, it is so important to know that no matter how many times you make something, things will go wrong and that is OK.

I have been avoiding making any other frozen treats since this happened but no longer! I am purging this foodie memory from my brain and moving on.