TWD: Honey-Peach Ice Cream

Growing up in Colorado, we enjoyed fresh, juicy peaches in late summer and early fall. I love the sweet/tart flavor contrast and smooth texture of this savory fruit. I don't even mind the soft, furry skin. Therefore, I was very excited when I saw that the recipe for this week included this yummy fruit. The recipe is a smooth custard blended with honey and peach puree. It turns into a wonderfully sweet frozen treat. As great as this recipe sounds, I learned quite a few important lessons while whipping it up this week.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. Get an instant-read thermometer - my first attempt
at custard ended up in chunks. gross.

2. Always get enough to make two batches when making custard - so much easier when you can just dump out the first try and start over fresh



3. My ice cream maker still doesn't work correctly - makes milkshakes and not ice cream even when freezing the cylinder overnight. Maybe I'm just not patient enough for ice cream making...

4. The ice cream doesn't want to freeze no matter how long it's in the freezer - still more or less a milkshake. Not sure how or why this is happening.



5. This ice cream would be better with riper and more "peachy" peaches - used peaches that were still hard and didn't have that nice tart bite to them yet. I ended up boiling all of the peaches in the honey to soften them and it really mellowed the flavor.

6. Its a great surprise to find an icy piece of fruit in your ice cream - left the peaches mixed in during the churning process in larger pieces than suggested. Probably would have been better if I had used fresh ripe peach chunks.



6. The ice cream or milkshake or whatever you want to call it is really good regardless - and I don't care what you say mom, most people like the taste of custard.

7. Ice cream is good even when its not 90 degrees outside - its still surprisingly chilly here for summertime, but the ice cream still hit the spot.

I hope to be able to attempt an ice cream again soon. I need to experiment more with my ice cream maker to determine how best to get the ice cream to freeze.

The ice cream was great this week, but I'm anxious to do some actual baking again next week. Hope you'll check in to see how I do.

For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or read Brown Interior. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!