Homemade Peach Ice Cream

I thought I’d try to make some peach ice cream to send off both the Jersey peach season which is nearly over and summer which seems to have already left us. I have no ice cream maker and very little experience and I know homemade ice cream can be really bad having eaten what amounted to icy, sugary milk at various summertime gatherings.

I turned to the expertise of David Lebovitz, author of “The Perfect Scoop” who has an excellent blog that he writes from Paris. He’s got very useful info on how to make ice cream with or without a machine and I used his basic, custard-based vanilla recipe minus the vanilla bean to avoid overwhelming the peaches. There is a lot of heavy cream and egg yolks in it which keeps ice crystals from forming since fat doesn’t freeze well. The peaches became a bit icy and I’m not sure what could be done about that without somehow removing moisture from them. It wasn’t bothersome though since the ice cream around them stayed very creamy and was superior to your average pint. I’m sure a machine could do a better job and would be less trouble since I wouldn’t have to mix it up every half hour until it freezes. But it was overall a great success and it’s good to know it can be done without an expensive, space-eating machine.

David Lebovitz’s vanilla ice cream recipe is here.