Ingredients:

Custard 

• 1000ml Heavy Cream
• 1000ml Milk
• 500g Sugar
• 5g Salt
• 24 Egg Yolks
• 100ml Strawberry Liqueur or Framboise

Strawberry Concentrate

• 1000g Strawberries (washed, trimmed, sliced)
• 1 Lemon (zest finely grated, juiced)
• 225g Brown Sugar
• 3g Salt

Instructions:

Strawberry Concentrate

1. Place your strawberries, lemon zest and juice, brown sugar and salt into a wide surface pan and cook over medium high heat until the mixture comes to a boil.
2. When the mixture comes to a boil, continue to cook the strawberries for an additional 15-20mins until the pulp has broken down and the volume has reduced by half.
3. Remove and set aside when done.

Custard and Ice Cream Base

1. Place milk and half your sugar into a pan and cook over medium high heat until it reaches a simmer.
2. Place your remaining sugar, egg yolks, and salt into a bowl and whisk until fully combined.
3. Pour your warm milk mixture into your egg yolk mixture in batches while constantly whisking to full emulsify the two together.
4. Pour the custard back into the pan and cook over medium high heat while constantly stirring the bottom of the pan with a rubber spatula until it reaches 165°F and turns into a light custard.
5. Pass your custard mix through a strainer and into a clean bowl, and pour your cold cream into the custard, followed by your strawberry concentrate and fruit liqueur.  Stir with a whisk until fully incorporated.  Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate until well chilled.
6. Pour your chilled custard mix into an ice-cream maker and freeze or churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
7. Remove your ice cream from the ice-cream maker and place in a airtight food safe container and into the freezer until you’re ready to serve.

Notes:

• It’s really important to use best quality strawberries you can find when making this ice cream.  The more ripe and better quality the strawberries, the better and more flavourful this ice cream will be.
• You can choose to omit the alcohol in this recipe, but I find that it gives this ice cream a bit more character as well as helps prevent the ice cream from becoming too hard when sitting in the freezer.
• Alternatively, you can play around with this recipe a bit by swapping the lemon with oranges or another citrus fruit.  Or adding a few tablespoons of good quality Balsamic Vinegar to the strawberries during cooking, etc.
• You only warm up the milk and save the cold cream to help quickly chill the custard mix down.  It basically reduces your cooking time as there’s less liquid to heat up and reduces your time waiting for the custard mix to chill before refrigerating.
• When churning your ice cream, it’s important not to over churn your ice cream mix.  Due to the high milk fat content, if you over churn your ice cream mix, you’ll end up with bits of butter in your ice cream.  You basically want to churn your ice cream until it reaches a soft serve consistency and has the ability to hold it’s shape.
• This makes a very large batch of ice cream but since it’s kept and stored in the freezer, it holds beautifully well.