Strawberry Lime ice cream

Are you daring enough to test a sour twist to the strawberry classic? (hint: you should be!)

Strawberry ice cream is loved by many around our planet – a long-time favourite which regularly makes it into the international top ten-lists of popular ice cream-flavours (where vanilla and chocolate usually rules in the very top, by the way).

Being fond both of strawberries and of trying new ice cream ideas, I jumped at the opportunity to put a citric twist to the beloved old favourite.

As you probably know, most “normal” strawberry ice cream recipes (including those on this site) tend to recommend adding a little lemon juice to avoid a too sweet and “zest-less” ice cream. But what if we threw some caution to the wind and added much more than just a little citrus juice? Would it still feel like strawberry ice cream? And most importantly – would it still be a nice ice cream?

All these questions begged for answers – I bought strawberries and a bunch of lime fruits and got going!

An easy-to-make base … with a pleasantly sour twist

For fruits like strawberry, my favourite ice cream base is usually variations of the so-called Philadelphia, or American style: with all the ingredients whisked together fresh and cold, and then churned into ice cream directly (without any custard-base-like heated cooking required), the strawberries maintain their freshness.

I decided to tweak one my personal go-to strawberry favourite recipe. By adding more than a dash of lime juice, the juice would not only bring its tangy flavour to bear, but also quite a lot of extra water. As we all know, too much water in ice creams typically means a lot of nasty ice crystals and an ice cream that will freeze solid when put in the freezer. What to do? While there are other ways, I opted to reduce the amount of cream and replace the milk with 10 % Greek/Turkish style yoghurt  (recalling that dairy, especially milk, to a large extent is made up of water)!

To start with, however, I chopped my fresh strawberries, added some sugar and let them macerate for at least half an hour or so to boost the flavour and better prepare them for their future ice cream-existence.

Maceration – a great ice cream-preparation for many berries!

Now, putting the strawberries aside, I turned to the dairy- and lime part.

Very easy, indeed: Combine the cream, the yoghurt, the rest of the sugar(s) and add the lime juice and the lime zest.

Adding zest is important, since it will do wonders for the lime flavour … without adding any more water to our ice cream! To save time and dishwashing, simply zest your lime directly into the rest of the base.

Done? Good – let’s puré the now macerated strawberries (using a hand-held mixer or similar). Then we will add the puré to the rest of the base and whisk well.

The tell-tale colour tells us that the strawberries now has invaded the rest of the base. The pattern reminded me a bit of a squid … or perhaps some kind of squid-like space alien?

That is all!

Put the ice cream base in your ice cream machine (or still-freeze in your freezer, using the advice in this link), churn and enjoy the result!

The Lemony Strawberry experience

This zesty combination will certainly please those of us who like it slightly sour! But the strawberry flavour is there too, and the funny thing is that the overall result is a clear synergy – rather than tasting like strawberry with lime (or lime with strawberry), the two flavours unite well: in fact, one could almost expect that some inventive person had decided to cross-breed strawberries and limes into a third new fruit for this ice cream.

Enjoying it freshly churned is great, but the ice cream also stores reasonably well (= as well as most Philadelphia style-ice creams) in the freezer. For easier scooping, however, I would suggest taking out the ice cream to thaw and soften up a bit about fifteen minutes or so before serving time.

I was very happy with my experiment: even the classics can need a bit of a shake-up at times … especially when the result turns out as delectable as here! So, delight both yourself and your sour-loving friends and loved ones with this exciting fresh twist to the classic strawberry formula!