Blackberry Swirl Ice Cream
Creamy homemade vanilla ice cream with swirls of sweetened fresh blackberry puree throughout. A perfect summer indulgence.Â
Can we please discuss horrible movies and books for a minute? Ages ago I saw the preview for The Host and decided, what the heck… I’ll put it on my Netflix queue. I’m always excited when a new movie arrives, because it’s something different and hopefully good. But there are times like last week when they were nothing but bad. The Host, for example. I put it on, and kept waiting to see if it would get any better. Nothing even remotely worth watching would be on until 9 and I couldn’t deal with silence. So, I left it on… for over an hour. I finally caved and turned it off. It was almost as bad as just about ever Ben Stiller movie ever produced, except the two Night at the Museum movies because I kind of enjoyed those. But every other movie. I’m talking bad. I want that hour of my life back.
With a book, if it’s bad, it’s pretty sad too but in a totally different way because you’re not just wasting an hour or two of your life, sometimes it’s days. For me, that book was Gone Girl. Now before you rip my head off, hear me out. I read it a while ago but the annoyance of it all still sits with me. Everyone and their mother was recommending this book. Oh it’s SO good, you’ve got to read it! Only it wasn’t. The first half, yes HALF, of the book dragged. By the second half it finally picked up but good grief I couldn’t just toss the book at the half way point because I had invested so much time into this darn thing already. I read till the end only to be annoyed some more. It wasn’t amazing. It let me down. It wasted not only hours but days of my life. Sure, it got a little better in the second half but it in no way wow’d me. I’m sure I’m in the minority with that one.
What’s the worst movie you’ve watched or book you’ve read?
But homemade ice cream… it’ll always wow me, especially when there is a custard base. It’s creamy and absolutely amazing. I promise there’s no going back after you try it. And it’s not to be scared either – pinky swear. It’s worth every ounce of effort to create creamy homemade perfection. Throw in a swirl of fresh sweet blackberry puree and it’s practically irresistible and totally screams summer. It also won’t last long because your entire family will devour it. You may want to make a double batch.
Get churning and enjoy the last few weeks of summer! Before you know it, we’ll be complaining about ice and snow again.
Blackberry Swirl Ice Cream
Ingredients
Puree:
- 6 oz blackberries
- 1/4 C granulated sugar
- 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
Ice cream:
- 1 1/2 C whole milk
- 1 1/2 C heavy cream, divided
- 3/4 C granulated sugar
- pinch salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 4 large egg yolks
Instructions
- In a small saucepan over medium heat, cook blackberries, sugar for 5-10 minutes. Stir and mash blackberries. Add cornstarch, mixing well. Strain mixture through a mesh strainer into a clean bowl. Discard solids. Cover and chill puree.
- In a medium saucepan over medium heat, cook whole milk, 1/2 cup heavy cream, sugar, salt and vanilla. Stir occasionally. When mixture begins steaming and bubbling around the edges, slowly drizzle into beaten yolks, whisking continuously. Pour egg mixture into saucepan. Continue cooking until mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon.
- Add remaining 1 cup heavy cream to a medium bowl, pour warm custard through a clean mesh strainer into remaining heavy cream. Chill over an ice bath. Cover and cool completely before churning, 4-6 hours or overnight.
- Churn according to manufacturer's directions. Layer ice cream and drizzles of blackberry puree in a freezer safe container. Cover and freeze until solid.
I read another book by the same author, Sharp Objects. I hated it! Everyone else said it was fantastic but I really just thought it was boring! Snooze! I think I deserve some of this blackberry swirl ice cream as a prize for suffering through the entire thing for book club. :)
You definitely deserve a bowl for that! :)
Custard based ice cream is always my favorite!! This look so creamy and girl your swirls look perfect!! Plus, I love blackberries!! This ice cream is looking really good for breakfast. Wish I had some!
Ice cream should totally be an approved breakfast item ;)
So pretty!
I skipped Gone Girl because I usually hate hyped up book. Like 50 Shades of Grey. I’m still mad I wasted 11 bucks on that one. I’m not much of a movie person. We did watch Olympus Has Fallen last night and it was really good.
I’m glad I skipped 50 shades of grey. I couldn’t help but think it was all hype.
I love blackberries. This looks great! Wish I could reach through the monitor and grab some. :)
Thanks Norma! I’d happily share :)
I love blackberries,Your clicks make my mouth water! so yummy…
I know what you mean about the time wasted on a bad movie/book. There have been books that were awful, but somehow I felt bad not finishing them so I persevered. In retrospect, what was the point? I should’ve just dropped them and moved on!
P.S. How did you get such perfect scoops for your photos? What’s the secret!
Right? At what point should we call it quits with a movie or book? There should be a criteria that they must meet for it to be worth moving forward with… 10/15 minutes or so many chapters?
Oh my, your photos are so perfect! I am having a strong craving for this ice cream right now, it looks divine :)
My favorite movie I love to complain about that everyone loved is, “Saving Private Ryan.” Okay, listen, the D-Day scene was spectacular, yes, but the audience members never got to know the characters enough to care much about them. I usually love Spielberg – “Munich” for example – but WHO CARED if Private Ryan got saved or not? I didn’t know him. Who cared if the guy who had a short monologue (which was supposed to make us feel something for him ) got killed? That monologue just meant to me that he was going to get killed, There had been no character development other than those couple of minutes. Oh, and “Gladiator” which had NO heart, was a rip-off of “Braveheart” which was FULL of heart; they only had different settings. Again, no character development of Russell Crowe’s wife… Who cared if she got killed?? But you agonized over Mel Gibson’s wife getting murdered. Sorry this post is soooo long!
Strangely enough, I’ve never seen those movies lol I think it’s like the Green Mile and even Forest Gump… I refused to watch those for SO long. I have a feeling I’ll never see the ones you mentioned though.
I know exactly what you mean about rubbish movies and books! At the moment, I’m really into reading and I was reading the Matched trilogy and the first book just didn’t get me into it. I was like really?! Everyone says this is so good! But because I’d spent ages reading it, I persevered and now I’m actually glad I did, because the 2nd & 3rd books were soooo much better!!
I’ve just downloaded The Host to watch actually, perhaps I’ll plan some work on my laptop so it can just be background noise…
Anyways, this ice cream is pushing the ice cream maker I want higher and higher up my wish list!! Love blackberries so much, but I don’t bake with them anywhere near enough!
Definitely best as background noise. It was such a disappointment but I honestly hadn’t heard much good about the book either so I should’ve known better. And definitely move that ice cream maker to the top of your list! :)
I was forced to watch Parental Guidance on an air plane and briefly wished the plane would crash to end my misery. The WORST movie in the history of painful movies, I would rather watch Cool as Ice, the Vanilla Ice movie on repeat for a decade than ten more minutes of that crap. And I hated 50 Shades of Grey. The sex didn’t offend me, I actually didn’t find it all that tawdry, the writing so hideously awful and I could not have given a crap about any of the characters, so awful.
Yeah I wasn’t thrilled with that one either. So cheesy. I had hoped it would be funnier but it really wasn’t.
mmm love blackberries! i like the idea of the swirl in this..yours looks so perfectly swirled, i bet mine would come out all weird. i swear when i try to achieve some look, it always comes out opposite. there have only been a handful of movies that i liked that are derived from books..HP and HG are def amazing :)
I’m still a bit bummed over some of the HP movies but they were still good just not AS good as the books.
sounds like a delicious flavor!
Thanks Dina!
Thank you for saving a few days of my life, Rachel! Gone Girl was in my Amazon cart. Was. Another blogger recommended it. Also, props to you and Jackie above as I was going to read 50 Shades as well during my 2 week vacation. I think I am going to read cookbooks instead. Thank you muches, ladies! Now…this ice cream? Beautifully shot! Love the light cascading over the perfectly scooped scoops. Looks divine and I will be pinning to group boards at Pinterest. Thanks for sharing and hope you find better entertainment to unwind from the grind…soon!
Definitely worth skipping IMO. I mean I know a lot who totally loved it but meh lol. ;) There are definitely better books to read… and like you said, why not cookbooks?!
Love your photos and the ice cream looks totally fabulous!
Thanks Angelyn! :)
Sorry about the terrible movies and books! I stopped reading years ago. I honestly don’t have the patience to read.
But man oh man. Nothing beats homemade ice cream, for sure. And with those swirls?! Swoon!
I go through those phases too but there’s just something fun about a good book but the bad ones really annoy me ;)
Custard ice cream with a blackberry swirl? SIgn me up please! Your swirls are so perfect girl! I pretty much stick to reading cookbooks and magazines. I never got into the hype of all those books!!!
You know what’s funny… as much as I love a good cooking/recipe magazine, I never read the articles. I don’t think I ever have.
I hated Gone Girl and halfway through winded up skimming to the end. The twist was so obvious to me and I found the writing to be really inauthentic. But everyone, including readers whose opinions I really trust, loved that book. So refreshing to hear someone else wasn’t wowed by it. And this ice cream? I’m in love. I have yet to successfully swirl an ice cream.
Yeah the books, you win some lose some! But this ice cream! We have blackberries that grow wild all around us so they are always around! This is a beautiful way to use them.
Your ice cream looks divine! I want a spoon and just eat it from my screen. Also, thank you…Gone Girl was awful. Psychotic……oh my gosh, I actually didn’t even get through it. Read the first few chapters, skipped to the end and then just hit return/delete on my ipad. Ugh!! I just finished Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella and it was okay, slow, but that might have been because I had the audio book and wish I could speed up the audio. Maybe just me. I also read A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet by Sophie Hudson, totally recommend that book. It made me miss my grandma and her sisters like whoa.
I’ll probably avoid any other books by her because of how annoyed I was by gone girl.