Drooling yet?

Anyway before I go on the method used for these types of ice creams has stayed relatively the same:
1) let fruit soak in alcohol for at least an hour or more
2) puree fruit in food processor
3) strain the puree mix through a strainer and into a pot
4) cook the strained puree mix over medium heat until puree mix turns into a jam-like consistency
5) pour the jam-like mix into a container and refrigerate until ready to be mixed with an ice cream base

So what do I use for an ice cream base? Well… something relatively simply like…
– 1 and 1/2 cups of milk
– 1/2 cup honey powder
– 2 to 3 cups of heavy cream

Essentially any vanilla ice cream base just without the vanilla extract.

So how did I get started?

This all began with a bottle of raspberry wine that was sitting in my kitchen for a while. I didn’t drink and as thus didn’t ingest the gifted alcohol. Since this particular bottle came from a dear friend of mine I just couldn’t part with the bottle or regift it so I decided that I wanted to try my hand at making ice cream with it.

However the only boozy ice cream mixes I found online dealt with making a custard based ice cream, which I did NOT want. Too lazy, and eggs are very temperamental, so eggs plus my laziness equals not very good custard based ice cream. So after a lot of trials and errors I came up with a semi-reasonable method of creating egg-less boozy ice creams…

Then I decided that for the raspberry wine I wanted to pair it with strawberry ice cream, but every strawberry ice cream recipe required to puree the strawberries and then cook it into a jam before mixing it with an ice cream base which is what brought me to the idea of having the strawberries soak and pureed in the alcohol before cooking the alcohol out.

And as thus was born my favorite method of creating various berry ice creams… so what have I made thus far for this series? Well…

Raspberry Wine with Strawberries
The first of the series, and by far the strongest balance in flavor. You could taste both the raspberries and the strawberries, but you could also taste the balance. It was sweet and flavorful and just well done over all.

Rum with Raspberries and Strawberries
Since I ran out of raspberry wine, I decided that rum would make for a decent substitute and I was glad that this turned out to be the case…

Rum with Raspberries, Strawberries, Blueberries and Blackberries
Since the local supermarket had plastic cups of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries together, I felt stuck on using those. Then again I thought that it would provide a more complex flavor, but for some reason on my tongue it just came out so complex that there wasn’t much in terms of flavor if that at all makes sense.

Rum and White Chocolate Liqueur with Blueberries and Blackberries
I had some White Chocolate Liqueur left over and decided to get rid of it, and glad I did, this turned out to be a lot better than the previous one… though not quite as flavorful as the others. However, I couldn’t stop eating it lately so who knows.

CONCLUSION
Yeah yeah yeah I know, I should probably branch out a bit more… and I am thinking about doing that. I just haven’t figured out when or how. With so much ice cream in my freezer I think I’ll hold back for the moment until I’m running low and then go from there…

Though a friend of mine suggested that I replicate her R2D2 cocktail into an ice cream… That could be a start once I get the recipe…

Hmm…