Practice Makes Perfect

Sunday afternoon I really wanted to try another ice cream recipe. Well, to be exact, this is a frozen yogurt. Fresh strawberry frozen yogurt. While my hubby was helping move the larger pieces of furniture with his dad on Saturday, I went through my 2 new ice cream books and added post-it notes to all the recipes that I wanted to try. Then, I narrowed it down to 2 recipes, to try before making my grandma's birthday ice cream. Basically, these were practice rounds. The strawberry frozen yogurt would be practice number one, followed by a trial run of the cheesecake ice cream (which involved making a custard).

The frozen yogurt recipe was straightforward enough. Nice and easy to warm me up for the more complicated recipe that would come later.

Frozen yogurt recipe

The first thing to do was wash, hull, and chop the strawberries. One pound to be exact. I bought a 2 lb clam shell of them and decided that I would just double to base of the recipe, then use the strawberry pure leftover for something else. Maybe Popsicles.

Fresh strawberries, washed

After all the strawberries were prepped, 1-1/3 cup of sugar was added to them, along with 4 tsp of vodka (kirsch was an option but we don't have any of that, despite our seemingly excessive bar stock for a couple of rare drinkers). Mix until the sugar is dissolved, and leave out at room temperature for a hour.

Only the best vodka for our ice cream

Now, all of the strawberry mix can be spooned into a blender. Blend until smooth along with a cup of full fat milk yogurt and a tsp of lemon juice. I used lime juice and added in some lime zest as well. Blend until smooth.

Frozen yogurt mix

The finished liquid should then be refrigerated for at least 1 hour before adding it to the ice cream maker. The bowl of the ice cream maker needs to be frozen solid. I do mean solid. My first attempt, the bowl wasn't cold enough and the mix didn't reach the consistency I was looking for. So, I put the mix back in the fridge, cleaned out the bowl and put it back in the freezer. Today, I tried it again and it worked much better. The mixture started thickening right away. I can see some ice crystals in it though so I am thinking that next time I might add some guar gum to the yogurt before blending it. A couple more hours in the freezer now and it should be done! We'll be enjoying some fresh strawberry frozen yogurt tomorrow after dinner!

Frozen yogurt, creating itself