I eat ice cream year-round and think everyone else should too. Summertime means outdoor ice cream season, of course, which is a little different from curling up at night in the winter with a spoon and a bowl of dark chocolate cacao nib gelato. I like my ice cream in a cup, in general, but there’s something particularly wonderful about ordering a cone on a bright sunny day and letting it drip down onto your fingers, leaving a sticky sugar residue that signals it’s time for a dip in cold ocean water at a hot sandy beach.
If I’m eating an ice cream cone, I prefer a smooth ice cream—unadulterated if you will. No fudge pieces. No gobs of fruit. No peanut butter swirls. But if I’m eating a cup (or let’s be honest, spoonfuls straight from the pint container), then I’m all about the mix-ins. I want a ratio of roughly 50% cookie dough chunks and 50% ice cream. I want my ice cream as a light garnish to the good stuff inside—the milk to my cereal, if you will. In fact, rarely does store-bought ice cream have enough mix-ins, so I’ve taken to letting it melt slightly before stirring in some of my own. Favorites are Kix cereal, chopped-up Andes mints, crushed chocolate biscotti, and candied ginger.
But in a cone? Those extra bits are a nuisance. An obstacle to lickability, if you will. But without them, the ice cream itself really has to shine as there’s nothing for the flavor to hide behind. You can easily enjoy a scoop of mediocre vanilla bean if it’s doused in caramel and showered with sprinkles, or a cup of just so-so chocolate if it’s studded with brownie bites, but if it’s just the plain ice cream, it has to be good.
My definition of good when it comes to ice cream is this: the flavor should taste deeply of the real thing, but…creamier and frozen, obviously. Raspberry ice cream should taste like ripe raspberries. Lavender mascarpone should be creamy and tangy and floral. Caramel should have a hint of salt and you shouldn’t just taste sugar, but a richer, almost molasses-like sweetness.
When an ice cream really does taste exactly like the real thing, it’s the most delightfully surprising experience. I remember my first time tasting sweet corn ice cream—you take a bite and think “corn on the cob!” but it’s not a mouthful of buttery corn kernels at all, of course, but a cold and creamy bite of ice cream. Same goes for bitter chocolate sorbet or passionfruit tangerine—you know you’re eating ice cream, but the flavor is so vivid that it is just like unpeeling then crunching into a square of foil-wrapped chocolate or spooning up a bite of juicy passionfruit seeds.
So how does one go about creating such exquisite ice cream? And why do so many store-bought ones miss the mark? For one, most are too sweet, which masks the flavor of the starring ingredients. They’ve got all manner of preservatives and additives, which (in addition to general wholesomeness) is a point in the favor of making your own from scratch: you can skip all those weird extras.
It’s best to use very, very good ingredients. Think seasonally here—use fruit at the peak of its season, and the same for herbs. Cream and milk should be the best you can find too. (It should go without saying that raw milk ice cream is ridiculously excellent but I’m not an advocate of buying raw milk, since its tough to know how safely it was handled. Guess we all have to start milking a cow!)
This particular ice cream recipe is a really wonderful one for several reasons. For one, it has sour cream which gives it a great, fuller-bodied texture (think gelato) and a little tang. Secondly, the combination of strawberry and basil is one of the all-time best summer flavors. GO ON, ARGUE WITH ME.
To get the maximum basil flavor, you infuse heavy cream with fresh basil leaves and use that cream in the recipe. Feel free to make extra infused cream: it’s good for things like panna cotta and custard and pastry cream.
(And yes, I like sugar cones. As rightly any eight-year-old should. I mean, 33-year-old. Whatever.)
Strawberry Basil Ice Cream
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
3 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
1 cup sour cream
large pinch of kosher salt
Add the heavy cream and basil to a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer. Turn off the heat, and let sit for at least 20 minutes to let the cream infuse. Strain the cream through a sieve to get out all the basil leaves, and set the infused cream aside to cool.
Add the whole milk and sugar to a medium saucepan and heat, whisking constantly, until the sugar dissolves fully. Set aside and let cool to room temperature.
While the milk and cream cool, process the strawberries in a food processor until finely chopped and nearly pureed. (If you want the ice cream to be seedless, you can strain the strawberry puree through a sieve but no need to! I never do.)
Combine the pureed strawberries, cooled milk and sugar mixture, cooled infused cream, sour cream, and salt in a large bowl. Add to an ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer's instructions. Once finished, transfer to a freezer-safe container (I use a parchment-lined metal loaf pan) and freeze until firm.