TWD: Blueberry Coconut Sorbet Cream

Ahhh, fruit. It's summer, we love it...so much so in fact that 3/4 of the latest TWD's have been fruit related. Even last week's had banana in it as well as chocolate, and while I don't really consider banana a fruit as much as a veggie...I'll admit, it was still a fruit.

But I had my chocolate fix last week...and I've made more than a few chocolate cupcakes this week for orders and events...so I wasn't minding fruit all that much again, ESPECIALLY since it is coming to me in the form of one of my favorite treats of all time. Ice Cream. Chosen by Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiousity, it used blueberry and sour cream as the primary ingredients.

Five years ago, my Mother gifted us with an engagement ice cream maker, and I was so excited because I had been dying to make ice cream for what seemed like forever. How many times have we made ice cream since getting that fab gift in 2003? Zero.

In fact...I was so excited to use it finally, I didn't even realize that I don't even know where it is. I spent 30 minutes looking for it Sunday in our storage area in the garage. My hub was at the gym so I couldn't ask him where it was...and I was itching to take the few luxury nothing-to-do hours and play with my ice cream while I had them. So I improvised.

The sweet TWD hosts posted some links on How to Make Ice Cream without an Ice Cream Maker...but do I like to take the easy way out? Nope. So I Googled it myself and did a little reading. In the end, I liked this method at eHow and so I went with it.



I had sour cream to use for this recipe, but I also had some leftover coconut milk from an experimental coconut cake about a week and a half ago in the fridge and I wanted to use that up. So I went with a Blueberry Coconut version instead of Sour Cream. I also added Orange Blossom Honey to the mixture after tasting the ice cream soup...it really seemed to give it that tiny little bit of something extra. I added additional blueberries into the mix, because it did not have enough of a blueberry taste for me at first.

I didn't use a blender, but instead used my little Cuisinart faux food processor, really just a grinder and whirrer and it was super easy and just the right size, after I figured out that I had to put a paper towel over the top and hold it down or else my ice cream blueberry-staining soup would go all over the counter.



Into the fridge my ice cream bowl went, and I waited a scant 45 minutes before transferring to the freezer. I am not a patient woman..and this was only the beginning of the process sans ice cream maker. I ate already-existing yummy Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream while I waited for the transfer to the freezer.

So then, every 30 minutes for the next 1.5 hours, I took my ice cream bowl out and whipped it with my hand mixer for 2-3 minutes, then returned it to the freezer. After that was over, I let it chill for the afternoon while we went off to meet my parents at the San Jose Jazz Festival which is within walking distance of our house, tres fun.

When we returned, I checked out the ice cream. It was a bit more like a sorbet than ice cream since it had a fair amount of ice crystals until it melted, but we loved it anyway. It had a very strong taste of blueberry, a hint of honey, and the subtle coconut flavor. The flavors were wonderful together, very rich. The color was a fun dark purple.



Check out the other fabulous ice cream concoctions from the massive (230+ members?!) TWD community. Also, this is my pal Betty's first Tuesday with the group...so please check out her ice cream once she posts it, and leave her a sweet comment to welcome her to the baking& blogging world.

Would I make this again? Absolutely. And now that I realize it actually is not that hard to (a) make ice cream soup and (b) make ice cream from ice cream soup without the elusive and still-yet-to-be-found ice cream maker...I have so many ideas.