Recipe: Peach Ice Cream, No Ice Cream Maker Required

Over the past few years my flawless taste in music has been compromised by my lovely husband. He loves country music. I know. I've obviously got Stockholm Syndrome because I actually don't mind some of it nowadays! One artist on high rotation in our household is Luke Bryan and he has a song that talks about 'homemade peach ice-cream on sunburnt lips'. Over the years I've loved the thought of the former and definitely not the latter.

So today I thought I'd bite the bullet and make my own homemade peach ice-cream. It was a rip-roaring successs!

I glimpsed a few recipes online and then altered it to suit the ingredients I had in stock.

Stone fruit is abundant in southeast Queensland at the moment; in fact I scored peaches and nectarines for $1.50 a kilo! Of course they all ripened at once and so I had a perfect opportunity to turn something perfectly lush and nutritious into something seriously decadent. Ha!

So, here's what I did! If you give it a go, let me know how you go. The results got a big thumbs up from Dylan and I reckon it was pretty bloody delicious too!

Ingredients:

10 peaches (or mixed peaches and nectarines will be fine- I won't tell anyone!) 250g marscapone (cream cheese would work too) 300ml cream (I had thickened cream in the fridge but pouring cream would also be fine, if not better) 4 eggs, separated 1/2 cup of sugar 1 large lemon 1/2 tsp of salt Vanilla bean extract or cinnamon, or both!

Method:

Chop the stone fruit and blitz in a blender or food processor. Strain the puree into a saucepan with a splash of water and a few tablespoons of sugar. The sugar in this recipe is to taste, so start with a little and adjust as the recipe's parts come together. Squeeze the lemon juice through the sieve into the puree, and add a pinch of salt. Heat the puree over low heat, skimming the guff that rises to the top. Taste the puree.

If it tastes deliciously peachy and has reduced to a nice thick consistency, turn off the heat. Cool the puree down in the freezer while you prepare the rest of the ingredients so the heat doesn't zap the volume out of the egg whites and cream.

Separate the eggs, add a few tablespoons of sugar and whisk with a hand mixmaster, whiisk or in a stand-mixer until stiff peaks form.

In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the mascapone and cream. I thought afterward that I would have gotten an even better result if I whisked the cream into stiff peaks in a separate bowl first. More volume the better, I say!

Add your vanilla or cinnamon to the egg yolk mixture. Add a few tablespoons of sugar and make sure it's all incorporated well. Taste the mixture and adjust the sweetness and aromatics to taste.

Pour the cooled puree into the egg yolk recipe, then fold in the cream if you did it separately and the stiff egg whites.

I made mine in a stainless steel bowl with a plastic lid, so I was able to fit the lit right on and chuck it in the freezer. After 3 hours it was still fairly liquid but was frozen around the edges. I whipped it up with a fork and put it back in the freezer. After another three hours the top layer was firm enough to scoop so we had a our first try and it was just as I'd hoped! Creamy, peachy, zingy and delicious. I whipped it up again and we shall see how it looks after overnight in the freezer. In future I'd zest the lemon in to the mixture as well, and maybe add cinnamon instead of vanilla.

This made a huge quantity - I'd say at least 2 litres. Feel free to half the quantity depending on what you have in the fridge! The mascapone probably isn't necessary but I'm sure it didn't hurt either - nothing ever was less delicious for the addition of marscapone, am I right?! I also figured that if you made a biscuit base, you could use half of this mixture to make a cheesecake!

So there you go - homemade peach ice-cream. An absolute must this Summer.

xo,

Amanda