Suzanne’s 3-Minute Ice Cream
Serves 4
As so many of my recipes are born, this one showed its mettle at a dinner party night long ago when I had not planned a dessert, it was hot as hell and I was going to make a fruit macedoine and call it a night, with cookies, which I have on hand often because of my mama’s habit of doing same for the kids and grandkids.
I love taking work out of dinner parties, and this quickie was born to do just that!
I had previously frozen sugared peaches during their season for a treat in winter and remembered them lolling away without much notice for a couple of months and it occurred to me that they would be perfect in the fruit salad. But WAIT! Why not whip up those little devils in the bowl of a food processor, add cream and a dash of vanilla and voila, make instant ice cream!
It worked so well that I do it often now with frozen berries and stone fruits, except for apricots because of their texture, but even one or two of those with peaches or nectarines make a lovely gelato.
And it’s a great recipe for vegans if you substitute rich lait de coco for the heavy cream. It can also be made with full-fat Greek yogurt for a slightly different taste in ice cream, more like a Dairy Queen (‘50s USA commercial ice-cream-out-of-a-spigot). So many choices, so many lovely stone fruits right now, especially with this hot weather ripening and sweetening our produce quickly and well.
And don’t forget the cookie on the plate.
- 4 large peaches or nectarines, cut into thin slices, peeled or unpeeled, but if they are organic, and if you wish, leave the peel on
- ½-3/4 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- ½ -3/4 cup heavy cream or lait de coco
In a small bowl, sugar the peaches, add the vanilla and freeze.
Have dessert dishes ready when you make the ice cream.
When you are ready to serve the ice cream, not before, take the fruit out of the freezer for about 5 minutes before whizzing. Ever so slightly unfrozen is best, but NOT unfrozen.
In the bowl of a food processor, put the frozen fruit and start pulsing until the fruit is in smallish pieces. Add the cream as you pulse but just until you have a thick, lovely ice cream with no pieces of anything in it, unless you want a bit of texture.
With an ice cream scoop, put balls of ice cream in the dishes and serve immediately.
P-O Life reader, Suzanne Dunaway, has cooked since she was 5 years old, when she made cinnamon pinwheels from her mother’s pastry dough.
She LOVES to cook. Some might say she LIVES to cook. The smells, the tastes, the textures…
She is a firm believer in simplicity and creates her recipes in the ethos of ‘anyone can cook’.
After years of experience in her own kitchen, cooking schools and private classes all over the world, in this weekly blog, Suzanne shares with us her PO-inspired creations.
With many strings to her bow, she is also an artist and columnist, with two published cookbooks.
All content and recipes are copyright of Suzanne Dunaway.