Strawberry ice cream from scratch

The simplest strawberry ice cream recipe 🍓

Step 1: Grow your own strawberries. No but actually. When I tell you this ice cream tastes like a strawberry flavor bomb you’ve never experienced before we must give full credit to my strawberry bed planted last spring.

There are three types of strawberries: June bearing, ever bearing and day neutral. This article does a great job explaining the differences between each. read here.

When I started my garden journey last spring I really did my research when it came to plant varieties. I’m a bit of an ADHD perfectionist and knew I didn’t want to end up with tiny little strawberries. Like give me the big fat boys, amiright? Naturally this led into a few hours of research and perhaps some decision fatigue.

Everbearing strawberries are a bit deceiving because who doesn’t want strawberries all summer long?! Well, you’ll be disappointed to know that you really only get two harvests. Mid summer and late summer. And the strawberries are usually smaller and not as flavorful. Ultimately, a June bearing strawberry is going to give you the fattest juiciest strawberries… and that’s just the way we like it. But hey, why not have a few varieties and experiment, right? I might do this next spring.

Eventually, I landed on these. The Honeoye Strawberry Plant—a June bearing strawberry. If these are sold out, mark your calendar to order next spring! You might not get a big harvest the first year (if at all) but damn they come back from a cold dark winter with a vengeance. These things were the first green thing in my garden!

So now that I’ve convinced you to grow your own strawberries, let’s make the best tasting strawberry ice cream you’ve ever had.🍦🍓

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Ingredients:

4 cups of homegrown strawberries

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon REAL vanilla

1 cup sugar

2 cups local farm A2 heavy cream

1 ½ cups local farm A2 half & half

2 teaspoons fine kosher salt

How to make it:

Put your ice cream churn bowl into the freezer for 24 hours prior to making your ice cream.

Roughly cut your strawberries into a bowl, add the sugar and lemon juice then mash it up with a potato masher. Let it sit and “marinate” for about 30-60 minutes on the counter (not necessary but I do believe this enhances the flavor).

Add in your heavy cream, half and half and salt. Stir, then freeze for 2-3 hours.

I froze mine accidentally for about 4-5 hours and it was a little toooo frozen so had to let it thaw a bit before churning.

Pro tip—don’t add your mixture to the ice cream churn bowl esp while it’s turning. Add it to the bowl first with the paddle in place thennn turn on your machine.

If you want some cute little paper pints to gift your ice cream in—I found these on Amazon and loveeee them. Paper pint containers linked. 🫶🏼

Sounds pretty easy right? Because it isssss! Strawberry ice cream is one of the easiest ice creams/desserts and there’s no egg or tempering necessary!

If you’re having some friends or fam over soon—make this—even if you have to use store bought strawbs for now. It’s just such a show and taste bud stopper.

I hope you enjoy!

Happy June 😘🍓