Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream & Cake!

Strawberry ice cream... Summery, right? Today was not so summery in Vancouver - pouring torrential rain mixed with hard cold granules of hail... all day! And the teensiest sun break in the clouds around dusk.

Oh man, I cannot wait until it's berry picking season here in British Columbia. Navigating prickly bushes on hot sunny days, plucking shiny blackberries from branches and filling buckets for freshly baked pies and general snacking. Whee, so fun!

This recipe is super simple, and it's taken from David Leibovitz's The Perfect Scoop. It's an interesting little texture straight out of the ice cream maker - super fluffy and airy, almost a mousse-like consistency, not hard like your typical scoop ice cream. You'll need to freeze it for a good 24 hours to solidify it. I used a pound of organic strawberries (I know they are more costly... but they taste sooo much better, amazingly sweet and complex and sour ... unlike their sometimes flavourless nonorganic brothers). The recipe calls for a technique called "macerating" your strawberries - sounds dangerous, right? Not at all! You just slice up those strawberries and mix them all up with your sugar and a teensy blast of vodka, and let sit for 1 hour. This little process helps to bring out the juiciness and sweetness in your berries. Fun, right?

And you get to use vodka.. so if you really wanted, you could take this opportunity to pour yourself a little icy delightful cocktail! I just love a cocktail that's cold and in a lovely glass. Glassware is so important to the enjoyment of my beverage.

Back to the ice cream... sweet, rich, creamy and tangy with that beautiful hue of soft strawberry pink.


{Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream}

You will need:

1 pound of strawberries (fresh, frozen, organic or non!)
3/4 cups of sugar
1 tablespoon of vodka
1 cup of sour cream
1 cup of heavy cream (whipping cream - 33% milk fat)
1/2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

to make the ice cream:

1. Slice the strawberries and place in a medium sized bowl with the sugar and vodka. Gently toss to combine. Cover and let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.
2. Place strawberry mixture in a blender with the sour cream, heavy cream and lemon juice. Pulse to blend so some small strawberry chunks remain.
3. Pour into medium sized bowl and power-chill in freezer for 30 minutes, or chill in refrigerator until nice and cold (1-2 hours).
4. Pour into ice cream maker and mix according to ice cream maker instructions, I churned this recipe for about 25 minutes. Freeze this overnight to get it to a hard-scoop consistency. To keep the mousse-like airiness, eat right away!
5. Enjoy your ice cream and marvel at how freaking easy that was! You feel like a genius!!


and now... the CAKE!



So the real purpose of me making this strawberry ice cream was to use it as a filling for a Mother's Day cake!

I made an 8 inch round vanilla cake, added a little pink food colouring and baked it. Then I was confused. I had never made a layer cakey thing with ice cream as a filling - how do I build it? Do I freeze everything? Do I build it last minute?? I ended up freezing the cake, and still building it last minute. So next time for the ease of cutting the cake (it was ROCK HARD and very hard to cut into, even after 15 minutes of being out! Holy!) I will build it right before serving it!

So here are the layers:

Bottom: pink vanilla cake, with strawberry preserves spread on top.
Middle: ice cream, poured into an 8 inch spring-release pan and frozen overnight to stay extra-set.
Top: pink vanilla cake, with more strawberry preserves.
Very top: fresh whipping cream and fresh sliced organic strawberries.
Extra very top: A little cake bunting I made using Japanese washi tape (colored masking tape) and wooden skewers, in matching pink and grey cuteness! My grandma said it looked like laundry hanging out to dry!

I loved how this cake turned out visually... so cute!

Bye for now Ice Cream Land!

xo Lyndsay