So, someone gave us an ice cream maker, causing us to buy an ince cream maker.
Allow me to explain. Someone gave us an ice cream maker, so we had vague, distant plans to Make Ice Cream With It. Then we got eight pints of strawberries from the CSA in two weeks, so vague and distant became considerably more immediate.
I also have a lot of basil in the garden, and strawberry/basil is classic, so I started researching recipes for strawberry/basil ice cream. I ended on this recipe from Epicurious, which you may note has no basil in it.
Looking at the amounts of basil in other recipes, I decided they could all go to hell and used one half cup of packed Thai basil leaves for a doubled two pounds of strawberries. I chopped the basil fine and mashed it with the strawberries and sugar, pureeing some of it with the strawberries and leaving some of it with the un-pureed strawberries.
So a giant bowl of ice cream mix went into the fridge. And then we got out the gifted ice cream maker... and discovered the motor was dead. Since a gallon of strawberry-basil flavored sweetened heavy cream seemed like an odd thing to keep around in a liquid state, but also an odd thing to waste, a quick bit of research lead us to a hurried trip to Bed Bath and Beyond for a "Nostalgia Electrics" model that seems to work fine.
I'm not sure I would call this a "perfect" no-cook ice cream. It's very good, and its structural and textural flaws on account of not being a custard are minor when compared to the hassle tradeoff.
A second experiment, using an uncooked recipe with nectarines and eggs, didn't come together AT ALL. In fact, the container of poorly frozen goo still sits in the chest freezer, awaiting an idea of how to resurrect it or conveniently dispose of it.
The experimentation is fun, if a bit bulky and messy, but I think I mainly see it as another preservation method for when I end up with a surfeit of one ingredient or another. With cream from Costco, it's... well, I wouldn't necessarily say cost-effective, but it's not cost-prohibitive.
