Any-Fruit FroYo or Ice Cream

This version was made with peaches and 2% Greek yogurt.

I make tons and tons of ice cream and frozen yogurt all summer long. Sometimes. It’s like doing yoga or making mozzarella or taking fish oil capsules: a passion that I get all evangelical about—until I forget about it for months or years on end, and you’re like, “Do you want to go to that hot yoga class you totally forced me to become addicted to and now I’m obsessed and broke and exhausted all the time?” And I’m like, “What? Nah.” But this has been a big ice-cream summer for us, and we've loved it.

If you put out healthy toppings, such as fruit, toasted coconut, and slivered almonds. . .

. . . then you can let everyone top their bowls just how they like. . . 

. . . and it will be delicious. . . 

. . . and you can call it "dinner"!

I’ll make a custard base for vanilla or chocolate ice cream. But for fruit, I pretty much always use a version of the same, super-easy recipe: "Any Berry Ice Cream" from the late, great Barbara Tropp’s scrumptastic China Moon cookbook (longtime readers: this is the cookbook whence comes the famous, mandatory green vinaigrette). I love it because it’s perfect, it’s fast, it’s not obscenely rich, and it’s a lovely, light showcase for gorgeous, fragrant summer fruit. Plus, you don’t have to cook anything, and once you get the gist of the formula, you really can use pretty much any fruit. Okay, maybe not really any fruit. But any berry or stone fruit will work--peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, cherries, raspberries, strawberries, etc.--or, even, flavorful melon or very ripe pears. Or you can also use citrus juice and some grated zest, boosted with extra sugar, to make incredible sherbet. Earlier in the summer, I made tons of strawberry ice cream and cherry ice cream. For the cherry, I whapped some of the pits with a hammer (like this) then included the kernels for their divine almondy flavor. Yum. I am planning to make raspberry ice cream later in the week.

We buy big bags of cheap, burstingly ripe scratch-and-dent peaches (aka "utility" peaches) from a local orchard and use the rest for jam.

photogenic detritus

If you don’t have an ice cream maker, and you have room in your freezer, at least during the summer, to store the inner container (it needs to be frozen before you use it), then this is the ice cream maker I recommend. Otherwise, I'll bet that Googling "how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker" would get you some pretty helpful ideas. It goes without saying: homemade is a much, much cheaper way than buying it to end up with a quart of fabulous ice cream.

Any-Fruit FroYo or Ice Cream

Make 1-plus quarts

Adapted from China Moon. This is a very flexible recipe: you want a shy 4 cups total mixture, but you can vary the amounts of fruit and dairy. You can use all yogurt, for excellent frozen yogurt (use whole-milk or 2%, since lower fat starts to get a bit thin and depressing), all half and half, for excellent light ice cream, or a combination. Or, for a more sherbety situation, you can use more fruit overall and less dairy. Barbara Tropp recommended sieving the fruit mixture to get rid of the seeds. Guess whether or not I do.

Enough very ripe berries or stone fruit to make a shy 2 cups pureed (about ¾ pound berries, weighed after trimming, or around 5 peaches, or around 1 pound of melon flesh, etc.)

½-1 cup sugar (to taste)

1 or 2 teaspoons fresh-squeezed lemon or lime juice

1 or 2 optional tablespoons of a complementary liqueur (Amaretto goes beautifully with peaches)

2 cups half and half or plain (whole-milk or 2%) Greek yogurt or a combination

Pit, hull, or seed your fruit, skin it if necessary, and cut it into pieces, as needed, to smash and measure it. If your peach skins are thin and not to fuzzy, you can simply scrub them and not worry too much. But if they seem like they're going to make a nuisance of themselves, then you can halve the peaches, and use a juicer to ream the flesh from the skins. This is untraditional but effective. If you're measuring soft berries, such as strawberries, smash them down in the measuring cup with a potato masher to get a better read of the amount. Melon can simple be cut from its rind and chunked.

In a blender or food processor, whir together the fruit and sugar until smooth. Add the lemon or lime juice, optional liqueur, and yogurt or half and half and whir again. Now taste. The flavor should be rounded and just a bit too sweet so that it will taste perfect when it’s frozen. Add more lemon juice and/or sugar, whir, and taste again.

Ideally, chill the mixture, covered, for an hour or longer before freezing. But I usually don’t leave myself time for this. Freeze according to the directions of your ice-cream maker. If you can’t get it firm enough, scoop into a glass container, cover, and freeze until firm.

I use the untraditional juicer method for peaches, which works just fine.

And I use either blender or food processor, depending on which is clean.

I like to give it a bit of time to firm up in the freezer.

Ben has to taste it before deciding exactly what balance of toppings he wants.