Raspberry Ice Cream

I love raspberries. They are absolutely the best fruit in the world and my husband and kids completely agree. This week I went raspberry picking with my eldest son Zane with most of the berries for me to make jam but at his request we used part of our berries to make ice cream. 


My ice cream maker was a wedding gift 14 years ago and it's gotten a lot of use but I'm a lazy cook so the only recipes I've made were blend & pour. I've never made the heat, stir, add eggs sort of ice cream recipes before. Zane can be insistent (i.e. nagging) when he wants something and he REALLY wanted to make raspberry ice cream so we settled on this recipe from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz.


Raspberry Ice Cream

Makes about 1 quart – Adapted from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop

1 1/2 cups half and half and 1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 cup sugar

4 large egg yokes, lightly whisked to break up the egg yokes

1 1/2 cups strained raspberry puree

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Warm the sugar and cream together in a medium saucepan. Add about one cup of the warmed cream and sugar mixture to the whisked egg yolks stirring constantly so you don’t get scrambled eggs. Pour the egg/cream mixture back into the pot and continue to cook until the mixture reaches 170, or until the mixture coats the back of the spoon, stirring constantly.

Pour the custard through the strainer, just in case you scrambled some eggs, and add 1 1/2 cups strained raspberry puree and the lemon juice. Chill over an ice bath, stirring until cool. Taste the mixture to make sure it’s raspberry enough for you. If not, you can add 1 teaspoon raspberry extract or more raspberry puree.

I stored the ice cream in a 1 quart gelato container I saved from last summer and let it harden for a couple of hours before enjoying a bowl.

Let me admit one little mistake I made...I misread the eggs and added 4 egg whites instead of 4 egg yokes. It turned out fine and tasty and probably cut out a bunch of calories but still I'm mad at myself for that one. But hey, what else can you expect when cooking with kids?

By the way, we LOVE this ice cream and I've got a feeling I'll be making it again as soon as we go pick some more raspberries.