Add a mouth-watering scoop of luscious egg-free, jewel-tone, fresh Fig Cherry Goat Cheese Ice Cream to your summer!
Don't you just love summer and all it's beautiful bounty? I especially love when the tropical fruits from my childhood start popping up in stores, other than my frequented Asian and West Indian markets.
As I type this post, I am catching glimpses in my periphery of the tropical spread of sugar apples, soursop, mangoes, tamarind and guava on my kitchen counter. As much as I enjoy being able to enjoy them here, nothing quite compares to enjoying them, freshly picked, straight from my grandparent's backyard.
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Today, however, I want to tempt you with a scoop, or two, of my delightful Fresh Fig Cherry Goat Cheese Ice Cream.
Cherries, with their striking jewel-tone plumpness and subtle tarty sweetness, were love at first bite for me. Fresh figs, on the other hand, required a little warming up to. I vacillated, over the years, between adoration and disdain and remained somewhere in the middle for a while.
Over the last few years, I've become more familiar with the various types and most suited applications and now have a great appreciation for figs.
- Brown Turkey, for instance, is less sweet with a milder flavour. I like that variety on pizza alongside Gouda or Goat Cheese, with a generous serving of Pinot Grigio.
- Black Mission, the sweeter variety, is perfect eaten as is. I like using it for jams, salads, cheese boards and desserts.
I won't get into the other varieties, like Calimyrna and Adriatic, as they are hard to come by here. But if you are ever on vacation in the mediterranean, be sure to give them a try, the Adriatic, in particular.
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We make lots of ice cream year-round, but this was my first time using fid gas the star ingredient. I hadn't planned to, but I happened upon this and we had a large tray of figs on hand, so I thought I'd give it a try. I weighed the figs, but we had enjoyed a few, so we came up short. I didn't want to halve the recipe, so I looked over at the large bowl of glistening cherries and decided they would make up the difference.
I shared the result of that initial batch here, but true to form, I had to mess around with it just a touch more. I really liked how the cherry addition turned out, so I kept it for the second batch, added a little cheese and replaced the lemon with orange.
It's egg-free, but the cheese and cream lend enough creaminess to make it relatively rich in texture. The trick, as with all ice cream (IMO), is to allow it to warm up a bit out of the freezer. Just a few minutes wait, vastly improved the taste experience in this case. Brie or cream cheese would also be good options for the cheese add-in.
Give it a try before these in-season fruits and summer say bye-bye!!
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Fresh Fig Cherry Goat Cheese Ice Cream
Ingredients
Method
- Wash the figs well, remove the stems, cut figs into quarters and place in a saucepan.
- Add water the water and orange zest. Cover and cook over medium heat.
- Cook the figs until tender, stirring occasionally.
- Add the sugar, and continue to cook the mixture uncovered, stirring frequently, until it resembles the consistency of jam.
- Remove from the heat and press through a sieve/strainer. You may skip this step, if you want the extra crunch of seeds in your ice cream.
- Allow to cool to room temperature, add the cream, the cheese and blossom water or orange juice and blend well. You may do this in a blender, food processor, or if you have a good immersion blender, that works well too (and less clean-up).
- Refrigerate the mixture overnight, then freeze it in your ice cream maker following the manufacturer’s instructions.
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