PEACH FROZEN YOGURT

Just another step in my continuing (and blissful) effort to make every single recipe in David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop. I think it will surprise exactly no one that this was incredibly delicious. Mine was perhaps a tad on the icy side, but I’m willing to chalk that up to either the vagaries of my freezer (which tends to freeze things either rock-hard or inadequately) or too-watery/small early-season peaches. Luckily, I had accidentally disregarded Lebovitz’s directions and used Greek yogurt—he says this is the only fro-yo recipe he uses regular, non-strained yogurt in, “since the peach puree is so velvety thick.” I don’t recall my peach puree being exactly velvety thick, so the Greek yogurt helped compensate. Anyway, slightly textural issues aside, this was a cool and refreshing way to welcome the summer stone-fruit season (especially since I still don’t have a working oven, so no fruit cobblers, crisps, crumbles, pies, or cakes for me…sigh).

1½ pounds ripe peaches (about 5 large)
½ cup water
¾ cup sugar
1 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
A few drops freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. Peel the peaches, slice them in half, and remove the pits. Cut the peaches into chunks and cook them with the water in a medium, nonreactive saucepan over medium heat, covered, stirring occasionally, until soft and cooked through, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat, stir in the sugar, and then chill in the refrigerator.

2. When the peaches are cool, puree them in a food processor or blender with the yogurt until almost smooth but slightly chunky. Mix in a few drops of lemon juice.

3. Process in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Yields: About 3 cups
Time: 20 minutes, plus chilling and processing time
Leftover potential: Good; should last for about a week in the freezer

PUMPKIN ICE CREAM

Aw yeah.

Now, I’m not one of those people who goes gaga for pumpkin-flavored things every October. In fact, this was the first time in my life I’d ever bought canned pumpkin. I’ve never had a pumpkin spice latte and I don’t care for pumpkin pie. No doubt this is a relic of my squash-hating childhood, which I’m gradually growing out of. Sure, I appreciate the moisture that pumpkin lends to baked goods, but it still mostly seems like an excuse to foist a lot of spice-flavored desserts on me, and I have a limited tolerance for coffee cake and ginger snaps when chocolate or fruity or caramel/nut/butterscotch/vanilla (what would you call that category?) sweets are available. But a few years ago someone did turn me on to the Double Rainbow pumpkin ice cream Trader Joe’s carries every fall (or used to—I didn’t spot it this year), and A and I made short work of a pint. So now that I have my own ice cream maker and the sky’s the limit for flavors, it seemed natural to try to re-create that seasonal treat. For once, David Lebovitz’s A Perfect Scoop left me high and dry, and most of the pumpkin ice cream recipes I found online contained eggs, which we all know I’m too lazy to fuss with, but at long last I stumbled upon this recipe at Tasty Kitchen. It was one of the easiest ice creams I’ve ever made, rivals strawberry-sour cream for the downright creamiest (thanks to the pumpkin, it was thick and pillowy before I even poured it into the ice cream maker and became even fluffier after processing), and tasted incredibly delicious. It’s definitely going to become an October tradition at our house, and I may even have to make it one more time before Thanksgiving. If I’m not careful, I’m going to become one of those Pumpkin People.

It didn’t seem worth buying pumpkin pie spice for a one-off recipe like this, but luckily, DIY recipes are plentiful online. I went with this one from the Kitchn, but subbed cardamom, which I adore, for mace, which I didn’t have. I divided the recipe in half to achieve the called-for 1 tablespoon (actually, it’s 1 tablespoon plus ½ teaspoon, but close enough), but unfortunately I ran out of cinnamon, had to make a mad dash to the store, and returned so flustered I botched the math and put in twice as much as I was supposed to (1 tablespoon, eek!). The resulting ice cream definitely wasn’t inedible, but it did leave a slight burning sensation on the tongue. I think that’s the first time in my life I’ve experienced what too much cinnamon tastes like, and I don’t recommend it. Luckily, this is such an awesome ice cream that even that couldn’t put a damper on my glee every time I scooped myself a bowl.

1 can pumpkin (15 ounces)
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice*
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
⅛ teaspoons salt

*Homemade pumpkin pie spice:
Mix the following together in a small bowl:
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1. Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth and combined.

2. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 1 hour.

3. Process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Serves: 8
Time: 10 minutes, plus chilling and processing time
Leftover potential: Good.

PLUM/PLUOT ICE CREAM

With cooler weather upon us but the farmers’ market still full of summer fruit, I figured now would be the perfect time to make some ice cream. After consulting my ice cream bible, David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, I realized it had to be plum. Not only are stone fruits at their peak right now, but I’ve also never tasted plum ice cream before—let alone even thought about it. And I have no idea why plums don’t get more play in ice cream, because this stuff was phenomenal, with a brilliant bright pink color (the photo doesn’t do it justice), intense fruity flavor, and amazingly thick, velvety texture. Not to mention that I had all the ingredients except cream on hand already, and it was so very easy to throw together. I actually used pluots (not sure what variety; they had reddish-purple skin with brilliant red flesh—maybe Raspberry Jewel?) because that’s what we like to buy, but I think any variety of plum or pluot (or plumcot! or aprium!) would work here, and it would be fun to try this over and over again with different varieties.

1 pound pluots or plums (about 8)
⅓ cup water
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup heavy cream
½ teaspoon kirsch

1. Slice the plums/pluots in half and remove the pits. Cut the plums/pluots into eighths and put them in a medium, nonreactive saucepan with the water. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 8 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar until dissolved. Let cool to room temperature.

2. Once cool, puree in a blender or food processor with the cream and kirsch until smooth. Chill the mixture thoroughly.

3. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Yields: 1 quart
Time: 20 minutes active work, plus chilling and processing time
Leftover potential: Good

COOKIES AND CREAM ICE CREAM

Ever since Christmas, there’s been a box of Candy Cane Jo-Jo’s waiting patiently in my freezer for exactly this purpose. Cookies and cream is one of my favorite ice cream flavors, and Candy Cane Jo-Jo’s (Trader Joe’s delectable holiday-season-only chocolate sandwich cookies with crushed candy cane bits mixed into the cream filling, like the glorious love child of an Oreo and a Thin Mint) are my favorite (storebought) cookies, so of course I had to try combining them. I used David Lebovitz’s Philadelphia-style (i.e., non-egg-based) vanilla ice cream recipe from The Perfect Scoop, leaving out the vanilla bean since I wanted the peppermint and chocolate flavors to be the main attraction, and followed Lebovitz’s advice in the back of the book for adding mix-ins. Needless to say, the finished product was glorious. I’ve mainly stuck to the fruit ice creams so far, because it gave me some pretext of wholesomeness, but now the genie’s out of the bottle. I’m intoxicated by the possibilities for other variations: regular cookies and cream, oatmeal cookie, chocolate-chip cookie, peanut butter cookie…heck, not just cookies, but candy, nuts—I could throw anything I wanted in there! I’ll try to restrain myself, but it’s going to be a struggle. Good thing we seem to have entered the too-hot-to-make-ice-cream-in-my-un-air-conditioned-apartment phase of the summer.

3 cups heavy cream, or 2 cups heavy cream and 1 cup whole milk
¾ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups crushed cookies

1. Pour 1 cup of the cream into a medium saucepan and add the sugar. Warm over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved.

2. Remove from heat and add the remaining 2 cups cream, or the remaining 1 cup cream and 1 cup whole milk. Stir in the vanilla extract.

3. Chill mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator. Meanwhile, chill crushed cookies in the freezer.

4. Freeze in your ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Quickly stir in the crushed cookies before transferring ice cream to a storage container.

Yields: About 1 quart
Time: 15 minutes, plus chilling and processing time
Leftover potential: Good

ORANGE POPSICLE ICE CREAM

Further proof (as if I needed it) that David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop is an invaluable investment: A few weeks ago, two friends of mine visited me from Minnesota and we took a short roadtrip up to the central coast. For sustenance, we brought along a large bag of oranges from the farmers’ market—but then we stopped for dinner at a mutual friend’s parents’ house in Santa Barbara and they gave us a lovely parting gift (in the manner of Southern Californians) of a huge sack of oranges and lemons from their backyard tree, so even after three days of snacking, we came home with more oranges than we’d started with. I like eating oranges, but with strawberries and cherries and peaches and nectarines all coming into season, they’re not the first thing I reach for when I want some fruit. So I needed some sort of tasty recipe that used up a lot of oranges (sure, I could just juice them, but where’s the fun in that?), and naturally I thought, “I wonder if I could make orange ice cream?”

Of course I can, and The Perfect Scoop has the recipe. Now, orange is not my favorite fruit flavor. When I was a kid, the orange popsicles were always the last ones left languishing in the variety pack, getting sticky and syrupy in that weird way old popsicles do, until I would reluctantly finish them off (or foist them on unsuspecting friends) because my parents insisted that I finish the box before they would buy another. And don’t even get me started on the sad occasions at a relative’s house when the promised “ice cream for dessert” turned out to be just orange sherbet, which as far as I was concerned was practically health food in disguise. But I did have a soft spot for Creamsicles (or Dreamsicles, as we used to call them—was that just the knock-off brand? If so, it no longer seems to exist). Sure, I’d rather have a Drumstick or an ice cream sandwich any day, but if those weren’t available, a Creamsicle still made a worthy frozen treat, superior to the lowly everyday Popsicle. I still buy them occasionally, for that nostalgic vanilla-orange taste (plus there are now raspberry ones, which are even better).

So I was excited to see that not only did Lebovitz have an orange ice cream recipe, but he was comparing it to a Creamsicle. And indeed, although a whiff of vanilla would amp up the similarity, it does taste like a creamy orange popsicle—but even better, of course, what with the freshly squeezed orange juice and lack of corn syrup. At first I was ambivalent; it tasted quite sweet and…well, intensely orangey. But to my surprise, by the time we’d finished off the batch, I’d fallen in love. This is precisely the kind of unique recipe that makes it so thrilling to have an ice cream maker. I’d still probably turn down storebought orange sherbet if it was offered to me, but I ended up making this two times in a row. It’s refreshingly citrusy yet without the pucker of lemon, and (in California at least, with our juicy, plentiful oranges) you can make it cheaply all year round. Orange you glad I gave it a try? (Sorry; couldn't resist.)

I don’t know if it’s because the temperature’s on the rise or just because it contains fruit juice instead of a puree, but both times I made this, it came out of the ice cream maker fairly runny, rather than thick and fluffy like my first sour-cream-based ice cream. I was worried this would lead to a melty or icy finished product, but I stuck it in the freezer anyway and was rewarded with perfectly textured ice cream; I think the alcohol saved the day by preventing it from freezing too hard.

⅔cup sugar
Grated zest of 3 oranges, preferably unsprayed
1¼ cups freshly squeezed orange juice (from 4 or 5 large oranges)
1 cup sour cream
½ cup half-and-half
2 teaspoons Grand Marnier or another orange liqueur

1. In a blender, pulverize the sugar and orange zest until the zest is very fine. Add the orange juice, sour cream, half-and-half, and Grand Marnier and blend until the sugar is completely dissolved.

2. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then process it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Yields: About 1 quart
Time: 15 minutes of active work, plus chilling and processing time
Leftover potential: Good

FRESH APRICOT ICE CREAM

Until I moved to California, I had never tasted a fresh apricot. I’m not sure I’d even seen one before. I may not have even given a thought to their existence, although if I’d considered it, of course I would have realized that the dried ones had to come from somewhere. But it’s not like I sit around eating dried apricots all the time anyway.

Nowadays I’m getting to be an old pro at this Californian thing, so I get happy when fresh apricots start showing up at the farmers’ market in the spring. I’ll admit, however, that my happiness springs less from my and enjoyment of the apricots themselves and more from the fact that they herald the beginning of stone-fruit season. It turns out that I think fresh apricots are OK, but they don’t hold a candle to nectarines or peaches or even plums in my affection. Still, when I suddenly realized that I need to start making ice cream in all the fresh fruit flavors of my dreams NOW NOW NOW before it gets too hot, I turned to apricots because they’re the most genuinely in season. And of course, David Lebovitz had a recipe for fresh apricot ice cream in The Perfect Scoop. And it involved almond extract, my favorite!

Lebovitz encourages you to use super-ripe, squishy apricots, but I may have been a little early in the season because I had trouble finding ones that weren’t hard. Yeah, I could have waited a few days for them to ripen, but I wanted to make the ice cream right away because I had time that day and I’m impatient like that. So I asked the fruit-stand proprietor if he had any overripe apricots and he pointed me to a box behind the counter where the softer, bruised and dented specimens were tossed. Even those weren’t crazy ripe, mostly just bruised here and there, but I got them for the bargain price of 80 cents (as opposed to the normal price of $2.50)!

The ice cream was easy to make (slice apricots, simmer in water, stir in sugar, blend with other ingredients) and churned up nice and fluffy. At first I was a little disappointed with the flavor—it was on the tart side (maybe because of the ripeness issue) and I couldn’t taste the almond, just intense apricotiness. But after a few days—I don’t know if the flavors developed in the freezer or if my mood just shifted or what—I started to really love it. It was so fresh, unique, and summery; it’s like I finally understand what fresh apricots are for, and I feel lucky to have access to them.

1 pound squishy-ripe fresh apricots (10–16, depending on size)
½ cup water
½ cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream
3 drops almond extract
A few drops of freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. Slice the apricots open and remove the pits, then cut each apricot into sixths. Cook them with the water in a covered medium saucepan over medium heat until tender, about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar until dissolved. Let cool to room temperature.

2. Puree the apricots and any liquid in a blender or food processor until smooth. (If there are little fibers left, you can strain the mixture through a sieve.) Stir in the cream, almond extract, and lemon juice. Chill mixture thoroughly.

3. Process in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Yields:1 quart
Time: About 20 minutes of active work, plus a few hours of chilling, plus processing time
Leftover potential: Good, for about a week

STRAWBERRY-SOUR CREAM ICE CREAM

Neither A nor I really likes sour cream. Or, to be more accurate, we think of it in the same category as mayonnaise and cream cheese: good in certain contexts, but mystifying in its overall popular appeal. While sour cream is fine in a stroganoff or twice-baked potatoes, and it can be excellent in baked goods, you’re not going to catch us piling dollops of it onto our tacos or chili. I’ve become more neutral on the subject over the years; my aversion stems mainly from the quantities in which sour cream is often presented—it’s ruined so many restaurant meals by appearing unannounced in huge blobs that smother the entire plate, so you can bet that those Daisy commercials that show people happily eating it by the heaping spoonful give me the willies (similarly, although I now like a thin layer of mayonnaise on my BLTs, I still habitually resent mayo due to years of being presented with soggy sandwiches dripping with the stuff). But A harbors a distinct antipathy for many white, creamy foodstuffs, so when I announced to him that I’d found the perfect way to use up the rest of the sour cream in our fridge (I’d had to buy a whole container just for 3 tablespoons’ worth to go into his birthday cake) and the solution was making strawberry ice cream (from David Lebovitz’s indispensible The Perfect Scoop, of course), he replied, “Why would you do that?” I swore up and down that all online testimonials suggested it wouldn’t taste much like sour cream—tangier than normal ice cream, sure, but less tangy than frozen yogurt—but he remained skeptical until presented with a spoonful.

Folks, this is some good ice cream. As I predicted, the flavor wasn’t unusual—it’s just a really good strawberry ice cream, bright and fresh—but the texture sent me over the moon. I don’t know whether to thank the sour cream or perfect weather conditions, but this is the first recipe that’s turned out really thick and creamy for me right out of the ice cream maker. Thanks to lack of air conditioning, a temperamental freezer, and my refusal to bother with custard-based recipes, I’ve gotten used to homemade ice creams that taste delicious but vacillate between melty and icy. This one was amazingly light and fluffy, so much so that it nearly overflowed the bowl of the ice cream maker. I churned it while home alone on Saturday night, after returning from the pub with several beers in me, and I’m relieved there was no one around to see how greedily I licked the spatula, the beater, and even the freezer bowl, but I’m sorry that A didn’t get a chance to try this when it was freshly made. We’ve been eating bowls of it for dessert all week and it’s still fabulous, but the newly-churned version was incredible, cold, sweet, and pillowy, like strawberry whipped cream. For health purposes, strawberry frozen yogurt will remain my go-to recipe, but next time I have leftover sour cream, I know exactly what I’m doing with it.

1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled
¾ cup sugar
1 tablespoon kirsch or vodka (I used kirsch)
1 cup sour cream
1 cup heavy cream
½ teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. Slice strawberries and toss in a bowl with sugar and kirsch or vodka, stirring until sugar begins to dissolve. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour, stirring every so often.

2. Pulse the strawberries and their liquid with the sour cream, heavy cream, and lemon juice in a blender or food processor until almost smooth but still slightly chunky.

3. Refrigerate for 1 hour, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Yields: About 1¼ quarts
Time: 15 minutes of active work, 2 hours of waiting, plus processing time
Leftover potential: Best when freshly made, but will keep nicely in the freezer for at least a week

MEYER LEMON FROZEN YOGURT

We lucked into a big bag of Meyer lemons from A's friend's family's tree (inheriting large sacks of citrus fruit being one of those SoCal customs I'm happy to embrace), and I thought immediately of lemon frozen yogurt. I made lemon ice cream soon after acquiring my ice cream maker, but then came that run of delicious frozen yogurts over the summer, and now I'm enchanted with the tang and relative lightness of homemade fro-yo. I'd have to fly without a net, however, since my ice cream guru David Lebovitz didn't include lemon in the frozen yogurt variants in The Perfect Scoop. Luckily, I was able to cobble together this three-step, three-ingredient treat based on Lebovitz's other recipes and some intrepid Googling. The result is puckeringly tart-sweet (less passionate lemon lovers may want to dial down the lemon juice, particularly if you're not using the sweeter Meyers; I just wanted to use up all my juice in one go). A little goes a long way; a single scoop makes a refreshingly bright, cool treat after dinner or on a warm afternoon, particularly when topped with strawberries.

3 cups plain Greek yogurt (I used 2 cups whole-milk yogurt and 1 cup 2%)
1 to 1½ cups sugar (to taste)
1 cup freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice

1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and stir until sugar is dissolved.

2. Refrigerate several hours until fully chilled.

3. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.

Yields: About 1½ quarts
Time: 10 minutes, plus chilling and freezing time
Leftover potential: High; keeps well in the freezer for at least a week

HONEY-VANILLA ICE CREAM

I can scarcely express how much I love this ice cream. I like honey and I like vanilla, so I didn’t doubt that they would be good when mixed when cream and frozen to a fluff, but even so I was taken aback by how incredibly delicious this tastes to me. Sometimes I think it reminds me of something nostalgic and half-remembered, and other times I think it must be what’s meant by “a land flowing with milk and honey.”If I could figure out how to make the inside of my mouth taste like this all the time, I would die happy. It’s not just that this is a good, simple, easy ice cream recipe (by Patricia Wells, via 101 Cookbooks); it strikes some sort of deep chord in me. I’ve been dying to share it with you ever since I tried it...er, last July.

In fact, this is the recipe that put an end to my run of frozen-treat making, which had started when I got my ice cream maker for my birthday in April. It was a halcyon few months—and then summer happened. Triple-digit desert heat + an apartment with no air conditioning + a wimpy freezer = ICE CREAM FAIL, ironically at the time that one requires ice cream the most. Even after a night in the freezer, my honey ice cream had the consistency of a milkshake that had been sitting in a hot car. We slurped it down happily just the same, and I vowed to make it again come cooler weather. But still, even though I knew perfectly well that the heat was to blame (not to mention that homemade ice creams, at least the non-egg ones, tend to be softer than commercial ones anyway, and this one didn’t even contain fruit or anything else that might have given it some extra body), deep down I felt jinxed, like I’d lost my ice-cream mojo. What if I tried it again and it didn’t work? Fall rolled around, but I didn’t get back on the horse, telling myself that I needed to find a source of good-quality vanilla beans cheaper than my local grocery stores. (The original recipe called for two beans, which is wildly extravagant, and although delicious, unnecessary; even most plain vanilla ice cream recipes don’t use more than one. I used one bean this time and it turned out just as tasty.) When Santa put a jar of three Penzeys beans in my Christmas stocking, that excuse went out the window, and now, with spring and the advent of tasty fruit season upon us (I'm fixing to be a frozen yogurt fiend!), I knew I had to face my fears before the summer heat returned. And this time, everything worked out just fine.

Both times, I used the amazing honey I got from the CSA last summer, but now the jar is just about empty. Next time, I’ll buy the honey at the farmer’s market (probably orange blossom, which tastes like candy to me). I’m sure the recipe would still be better than a poke in the eye if you used average everyday honey, but since honey is the main flavor here, it’s worth getting the good stuff. Luckily, a big jar of good honey plus a vanilla bean make this just expensive enough that I can’t justify making it every week, because otherwise I’d be (bee?) in trouble. Did I mention I love this stuff?

1 vanilla bean
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
½ cup honey (use a high-quality, aromatic honey that you enjoy the flavor of)

1. Flatten the vanilla bean and cut it in half lengthwise. With a small spoon, scrape out the seeds. Place the seeds and pod in a medium saucepan. Add the cream, milk, and honey. Stir to dissolve the honey. Heat over medium heat, stirring from time to time, just until tiny bubbles form around the edges of the pan, 3 to 4 minutes.

2. Remove from the heat and let steep, covered, for 1 hour.

3. Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled (several hours to overnight).

4. Remove the vanilla pod, and stir the mixture again to blend. Transfer it to an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.

Serves: About 6
Time: 15 minutes, plus at least 4 hours of chilling time, plus freezing time
Leftover potential: Good

STRAWBERRY FROZEN YOGURT

When A and I took our first taste of this frozen yogurt after churning it in the ice cream maker, we both looked at each other and said, “Strawberry Julius.” My version may be a little fresher, but it took me right back to the treat I’d always order at mall staple Orange Julius when I was a kid, my reward for behaving myself after what then seemed like an interminable session of shopping with my mother. I gather from its Web site that Orange Julius has now become just another Jamba Juice/Robek’s clone, offering a wide variety of fruit smoothies with names like “Strawberry Xtreme” and “Tropical Tango,” but back then there were just two flavors, orange and strawberry, and you could get a raw egg blended in if you wanted to. (Ah, the ’80s, when we didn’t care about food safety, didn’t wear bike helmets, and rode in the back of hatchback cars without seat belts!)

Nostalgia aside, this is another great recipe from David Lebovitz (I got it from A Perfect Scoop, but you can also find a version on his blog)—pretty similar to the blueberry fro-yo I made a couple of weeks ago, only you macerate the strawberries with the sugar and alcohol to get the juices going, and you don’t have to press the mixture through a sieve (it’s an option, but I like the little crunch of strawberry seeds). It didn’t taste quite so magically revelatory to me as the blueberry one did, but it was still insanely delicious enough to shatter all my expectations about what frozen yogurt should be, and you can’t beat that brilliant shade of pink. Also, now that we finally have hot weather like the rest of the country, I can testify that this (fairly) light frozen treat is just about the best refreshment I can think of after a stroll on a warm summer night. Considering how plentiful and beautiful Southern California strawberries are, it’s a recipe I’ll make again and again.

1 pound (450g) strawberries, rinsed and hulled
⅔ cup (130g) sugar
2 teaspoons vodka or kirsch (optional, but recommended; I used kirsch)
1 cup (240g) plain whole-milk yogurt (I recommend Greek yogurt)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1. Slice the strawberries into small pieces. Toss in a bowl with the sugar and vodka or kirsch (if using) until the sugar begins to dissolve. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours, stirring every so often.

2. Transfer the strawberries and their juice to a blender or food processor. Add the yogurt and lemon juice. Pulse the machine until the mixture is almost smooth. If you wish, press the mixture through a mesh strainer to remove any seeds.

3. Chill for 1 hour, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Time: 3 hours 15 minutes, mostly hands-off, plus processing time
Yield: 1 quart (6-8 servings)
Leftover potential: Good

BLUEBERRY FROZEN YOGURT

(I wish the lighting in my kitchen were better, because this frozen yogurt was the most beautiful shade of blue-purple.)

I never knew I could feel this way about blueberry frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt always seems a little sad to me, like the consolation prize of desserts—something you eat if you’re dieting or if there’s no ice cream around. Yes, I know that “real” (i.e., actually yogurt-tasting) frozen yogurt is all trendy nowadays, what with that Pinkberry all the kids are talking about, but I haven’t jumped on board. All I think of when I think of frozen yogurt is (a) the 21 Choices frozen yogurt store in Pasadena that always has a line of tourists halfway around the block while the insanely good gelato store hidden 100 yards away is usually abandoned; and (b) the bland TCBY-style soft-serve-frozen-yogurt-with-many-toppings craze of the early 1990s. And blueberry? An actual fresh blueberry may be tasty, but as a flavoring, it’s hardly on my top-five list (for fruits, I generally gravitate toward strawberry, raspberry, lemon, lime, and cherry, in case you were wondering). In other words, if presented with a menu of frozen desserts, blueberry frozen yogurt would not be the first thing I’d order.

But of course, blueberry frozen yogurt homemade by me, with blueberries I picked with my very own hands and a recipe from the genius David Lebovitz, is another story entirely. Of the four desserts I’ve made in my ice cream maker so far, this may actually be my favorite. I can’t even tell you exactly why I love it so much. It’s tangy, but not too tangy, It’s deeply blueberry-flavored, but not too intense. Maybe it’s the little bit of kirsch, which adds a hint of almost almondy flavor (to me, cherry and almond flavors taste similar somehow, and I loooove me some almond flavor, so when I say something tastes like almonds, that’s a good thing—which is why even though I’m not much for fruity beers, I cannot resist Sam Adams Cherry Wheat beer; it’s like what drinking almond extract should be like). Whatever it is, I’m smitten. We don’t have enough blueberries left to make more of this (yes, that means we ate about 6 pounds of blueberries in a single week!), but I’m definitely making strawberry frozen yogurt ASAP, because dear god, I might like it even more than this, if such a thing is possible.

Oh, and what’s more, this was really easy to make, except for the momentary messy annoyance of pushing the blueberry mixture through a fine-mesh strainer.

1½ cups plain whole-milk yogurt (I recommend Greek yogurt for extra creaminess)
¾ cup sugar
3 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen
1 teaspoon kirsch
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. In a blender or food processor, blend together the yogurt, sugar, and blueberries.

2. Press the mixture through a strainer into a large bowl to remove the seeds and skin.

3. Stir in the kirsch and the lemon juice and chill in the fridge for one hour.

4. Freeze in your ice cream maker per the manufacturer’s instructions

Yield: 1 quart (6-8 servings)
Time: 15 minutes, plus 1 hour chilling time
Leftover potential: Good

ROASTED BANANA ICE CREAM

I’m not a big fan of raw bananas (in fact, overly ripe ones kind of gross me out), but they can be really good in cooked desserts—particularly when any sort of caramelization is involved. So when I opened up The Perfect Scoop for the first time and saw this recipe, I immediately knew it had to be one the first I tried. Bananas cooked with brown sugar and butter? Yes please! The smell of them baking was amazing, and if they hadn’t been as hot as molten lava when I pulled them out of the oven, I would have been powerless to resist cramming them into my mouth right then and there instead of throwing them into the blender with the rest of the ingredients. I’m not sure the resulting ice cream is quite as delectable to me as those caramelized bananas seemed, but it’s unique and plenty delicious, with a concentrated banana flavor that seems almost more banana-y than real bananas. A little of it goes a long way for me; I nearly couldn’t finish the two-scoop bowl pictured above and have found that the ice cream actually tastes best when you sneak just a spoonful or two straight from the container. It lasts all week that way, too!

Despite its intense flavor, this ice cream is actually relatively light, made with whole milk instead of eggs and cream (or even half-and-half, like the first two ice creams I tried). But the bananas lend it a deceptive creaminess and heft, as the peanut butter did for my first ice cream (whereas my second ice cream, the lemon one, turned out fluffier and grainier). It doesn’t matter much to me one way or the other—taste is more important to me than texture in this context, and I’m still just so amazed that I can create anything resembling ice cream in my own kitchen that I’m not concerned with attaining that “real” ultra-creamy ice-cream texture; if I were, I’d switch to custard-based recipes—but it’s interesting to see how different ingredients affect the outcome. Kitchen chemistry!

Like the others I’ve tried, this non-custard-based recipe is ridiculously easy to make, especially considering all the deliciousness it yields—just bake, blend, churn, freeze, and eat. Better still, it cost next to nothing to make: I rescued the ripe bananas from being consigned to the trash in my office kitchen on Friday (the company provides us with fresh fruit and there are always leftovers at the end of the week), the whole milk was 99 cents at Trader Joe’s, and I already had the sugars and a lemon. With its rich flavor and use of an always-available fruit, this will make an especially nice wintertime ice cream (perhaps with a tablespoon of rum added to the mix?). I’d also be interested to try it with chocolate chips or chocolate sauce to cut/complement the banananess.

I now have my very own copy of A Perfect Scoop in my hot little hands (it's on sale on Amazon, ahem), so expect my ice cream experiments to continue until the weather gets too hot for our freezer to keep ice cream frozen!

3 medium-sized ripe bananas, peeled
⅓ cup packed light brown sugar (I used dark, because that’s what I had)
1 tablespooon butter, salted or unsalted, cut into small pieces
1½ cups whole milk
2 tablespoons granualted sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ teaspoon coarse salt

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Slice the bananas into ½-inch-thick pieces and toss them with the brown sugar and butter in a 2-quart baking dish. Bake for 40 minutes, stirring just once halfway through, until bananas are browned and cooked through.

3. Scrape all the contents of the baking dish (the bananas and the thick syrup) into a blender or food processor. Add the milk, granulated sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, and salt and puree until smooth (be sure you close the lid tightly first!).

4. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (If the mixture has thickened during chilling, just give it a little stir to thin it back out before pouring it into the ice cream maker.)

Yield: About 1 quart (6–8 servings)
Time: 50 minutes, plus chilling and processing time
Leftover potential: Good

SUPER LEMON ICE CREAM

Another fantastic recipe from The Perfect Scoop, which I shall be buying immediately (or as soon as I’ve maxed out my library renewals, anyway). It’s ridiculously easy to make (throw stuff in blender, blend, chill, churn in ice cream maker) and, as promised, super-lemony—so refreshing on a summer day. And, conveniently, it used up the other half of the carton of half-and-half I bought for last weekend’s chocolate-peanut butter ice cream!

This ice cream turned out much lighter, so fluffy that I got nearly double the yield of my last attempt, and the texture is less creamy, almost crumbly when scooped and more akin to sorbet in the mouth. I thought maybe I messed something up (Did I overchurn it? I was also busy making BLTs and corn at the time), but since neither my KitchenAid instruction booklet nor Lebovitz’s book mention this as a potential ice-cream-making problem, I’m chalking it up to simply the lower fat content in this particular recipe—not only is it made with half-and-half rather than eggs or cream, but it doesn’t have the extra heft peanut butter provided last time around. Regardless, it’s delicious, so I’m not worried. I’ll definitely be making this again. I’ve seen variations online using limes instead of lemons, which would be excellent to try as well. I’d also like to figure out a way to incorporate strawberries into the ice cream for a strawberry-lemonade flavor (in the meantime, though, I’ll just serve it with strawberries on top).

2–3 lemons (the original recipe calls for 3, but mine were so juicy that two sufficed), preferably organic/unsprayed
½ cup sugar
2 cups half-and-half
1 pinch salt

1. Zest 2 lemons directly into a food processor or blender. Add the sugar and process until the zest is finely ground.

2. Juice the lemons you just zested, plus another lemon if necessary, to yield ½ cup juice. Add to the blender and blend until the sugar dissolves.

3. Add half-and-half and salt and blend.

4. Chill mixture for 1 hour, then freeze in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s directions.

Yield: 1 quart (for us, about 8 servings)
Time: 15 minutes, plus chilling and freezing time
Leftover potential: Good.

CHOCOLATE-PEANUT BUTTER ICE CREAM

Did I mention that A gave me the ice cream maker attachment for the KitchenAid mixer for my birthday last month? It took me a while to clear out enough space in the freezer for it, but in the meantime I checked David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop (much buzzed-about by food bloggers) out of the library...then after taking one look at this awesome must-have tome, I promptly added it to my Amazon wish list, flagged about half of the pages, forced the ice cream maker bowl into a corner of my freezer, and began daydreaming about which luscious-sounding recipe I'd make first. I wanted to start off easy, without having to futz around making an egg-based custard on the stove (custard and caramel are among my top cooking fears)--and luckily, Lebovitz's book offers copious non-custard options for ice cream, as well as frozen yogurt and sorbets. Inspired by the amazing peanut-butter chocolate-chip gelato I had a couple of months ago at our local gelato place, I quickly settled on this simple chocolate-peanut butter ice cream.

Really, it could not be easier. Basically, you make cocoa the old-fashioned way, on the stove, with half and half, Dutch process cocoa powder (I used Droste, like a good little Dutch girl), sugar, and a tiny bit of salt. When it boils, you remove it from the heat and whisk in the peanut butter, chill it, and then churn it in the ice cream maker. The hardest part for me was pouring the ice cream batter into the already-stirring mixer. The second-hardest part was just worrying that I was using the ice cream maker wrong and that my ice cream wouldn't freeze. And while I may have made a chocolatey mess of the kitchen, my ice cream turned out to be...ice cream, imagine that! After 30 minutes of churning, it was definitely on the mousse/melted soft-serve end of the continuum, which concerned me a bit, although it tasted delicious regardless. But when I stuck it in the freezer and served up a scoopful the next day, it was really proper ice cream, if denser than the commercial kind. While we were eating it, I kept turning to A and saying, "I made ice cream!" Oh, and the flavor? Delicious enough that it's going to be hard to convince myself to make a different kind next time, even if I do have dozens of tempting options Post-it Noted in the book. Seriously, if you have an ice cream maker and a love for the PB&C, you must make this immediately.

2 cups half-and-half
1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

1. Whisk together the half-and-half, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt in a large saucepan. Heat the mixture, whisking frequently, until it comes to a full, rolling boil (it will start to foam up). Remove from the heat and whisk in the peanut butter, stirring until thoroughly blended.

2. Chill mixture thoroughly, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Yield: about 1 quart (for us, about 6 servings)
Time: 20 minutes, plus churning and freezing time
Leftover potential: medium (tastes great no matter when you eat it, but it's hard to control yourself to even have leftovers in the first place; we made it last three days, but it was a struggle)