Sour cherry ice cream is just about the summeriest ice cream you can make. This version from the book Scoop Adventures is excellent!
A no-egg ice cream base ensures the sweet-tart fruit flavor really shines through in this homemade cherry ice cream!
Another one to check out is my chocolate cherry almond gelato
For ease of browsing here are all of my ice cream recipes (and a few ice cream cakes). Thanks for stopping by!
Disclosure: I was given a copy of Scoop Adventures by the fine folks at Page Street Publishing. Thanks guys!
Why This Recipe?
One of the things I really like about this recipe is that it is not a custard base, meaning that it doesn’t contain eggs.
The base is a mixture of sugar, milk, and heavy cream that allows the sweet-tart cherry flavor to really shine through.
Pastry Chef Online Participates in Affiliate Programs. If you make a purchase through one of my links, I may earn a small commission. For more information click to read my disclosure policy
I also love the cookbook this recipe comes from.
Scoop Adventures is a delightful book with recipes inspired by or adapted from recipes from great ice cream parlors across all 50 states.
The book is divided into geographical regions, so if you’re hankering for southern treats or maybe something from the Pacific Northwest, it’s easy to find a recipe to fit the bill.
Of course, the sour cherry ice cream recipe comes from Colorado, but it would be right at home in Michigan as well. And it certainly was right at home in my freezer and in my mouth!
How to Make It
Ingredients
Here’s what you need:
- sour cherries: fresh or frozen. If you can’t find tart cherries, macerate pitted sweet cherries with sugar, lemon juice, and 1/2 teaspoon citric acid
- granulated sugar: for sweetness. Sugar also affects the set of the ice cream. If it’s too sweet, it will never completely freeze.
- lemon juice: provides balance and a pop of acid
- heavy cream:
- whole milk: You can also substitute half and half instead of using heavy cream plus whole milk
Procedure
This is a very easy ice cream to put together. The components, made from the ingredients above, are simple:
- a homemade sour cherry syrup
- a Philadelphia-style (no egg, no starch) ice cream base
- Make the cherry syrup: simply macerate pitted cherries in a portion of the sugar and all the lemon juice for several hours.
Puree the mixture in a blender, and strain it out.
Reserve some of the cherry skins for texture in the final ice cream. - Make the base: cook the milk, cream, and the rest of the sugar until the sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil.
Chill. - Combine the cold cherry syrup with the cream base
- Churn in your ice cream maker.
- Mix in some of the reserved cherry skins for texture and added flavor.
The resulting ice cream is a lovely deep pink and the flavor is pure cherries and cream.
Q & A
Yes, fresh or frozen cherries will work here. If using frozen, there’s no reason to thaw them first before making the recipe. Just dump the sugar and lemon juice in with the frozen cherries, let them sit on the counter until thawed, and then let them finish macerating in the fridge.
You can absolutely substitute sweet cherries, fresh or frozen. The recipe suggests adding some citric acid to the mixture to approximate the flavor of tart cherries, but you don’t have to do that. You’ll still end up with a lovely sweet cherry ice cream.
Churning in an ice cream maker is certainly convenient, but if you don’t have one, you can still make this ice cream. Once you combine the cherry juice with the base, place in a metal bowl (to freeze faster) and place in the freezer. Whisk it very well every 30-45 minutes until it’s the consistency of soft-serve ice cream. Then press plastic wrap directly on the surface of the ice cream and freeze at least four hours if not overnight.
For best texture, finish your ice cream within about a week. Any longer, and it may start to get a little icy, especially if you’ve taken it out of the freezer a lot and it has partially thawed and then refrozen.
PRO TIP: If using sweet cherries and you don’t want to special order citric acid, substitute Fruit Fresh, which is readily available in grocery stores, for the citric acid.
It will help me and other readers so much if you take a moment to rate and leave a review for this recipe.
You can use the stars to rate 1-5 (5 is best), and leave a review in the comments. It helps me make adjustments if any are needed, and comments help others decide whether the recipe is worth making.
Other ways to share include pinning, and/or sharing on your favorite social media platform.
Thank you so much for taking the time!
Recipe from Scoop Adventures by Lindsay Clendaniel (Page Street Publishing; March 2014) Printed with permission
Colorado Sour Cherry Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 3 cups 465g sour cherries, pitted
- 1 ¼ cups 250g sugar, divided
- 1 tbsp 15ml lemon juice
- 2 cups 473ml heavy cream
- 1 cup 237ml whole milk
Instructions
- Combine cherries with ¾ cup (150g) of the sugar and lemon juice. Allow the cherries to macerate in the refrigerator for approximately 6 hours, stirring every hour. Purée the macerated cherries in a blender. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve to remove the cherry skins; reserve the juice. Reserve 2 tablespoons (30g) of the cherry skins and discard the remaining skins.
- Fill a large bowl with ice water and set aside. Combine the remaining 1/2 cup (100g) sugar with the heavy cream and whole milk and place over medium heat. Bring the milk mixture to a low boil. Cook until the sugar dissolves, 3 minutes. Remove from the heat, transfer to a medium bowl and set in the ice water bath to cool, 20 minutes, whisking occasionally. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 4 hours or overnight.
- When you are ready to churn, combine the reserved sour cherry juice and the milk mixture in an ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions. When churning is near completion, add the reserved cherry skins (adjust based on personal preference). Complete churning, transfer to a freezer-safe container and freeze until firm, at least 4 hours.
Did You Make Any Changes?
Notes
Nutrition
Hi, y’all! I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and hopefully also learned a thing or two.
If you like my style, I invite you to sign up for my occasional newsletter, The Inbox Pastry Chef.
Expect updates on new and tasty recipes as well as a bit of behind-the-scenes action. I hope to see you there!
Thanks for spending some time with me today. Enjoy that homemade cherry ice cream, okay?
Take care, and have a lovely day.
Join in Today!
Roughly how much cherry syrup is made in this process?
Hey, Alli. It has been so long since I made this (and it’s not my original recipe) that I don’t remeber. My guess is about 1 1/2 cups.
Thanks! I’m trying to adapt so I can use cherry syrup reserved from candying our sour cherries earlier this spring.
Oh, in that case, I would add to taste, making sure the sweet-tart balances nicely with the sweet-creamy. I imagine it will be delicious!
Love this recipe! I buy a giagantic bucket of Door County cherries every summer, and this is a great way to use them up. Especially delicious served atop homemade cherry pie.
Oh yeah! Cherry on cherry–can’t go wrong with that!
I made this ice cream today. It turned out fantastic! A look delicious!! I have an abundance of sour cherries every year as I have a tree in my backyard here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Thank you for this great recipe.
You are so welcome, Diana, and you are *so* lucky to have access to fresh sour cherries. None to be found–ever–in NC. So it’s canned or “regular” cherries plus some acid. One day, I shall have the real thing, and it will be a very happy day indeed! =)
Hi! I’ve had an ice cream maker for awhile now but my chronic illness has made me literally too tired to make my normal foods for months now, not to mention anything extra like ice cream. So I’d like to ask some questions in case I feel well enough to make something to narrow down the best way for me to make it. I’m allergic to cow’s milk but can have pure cream and butter. Thus I drink goat milk for my milk needs and I love it. (I actually drink whole all the time–the fat isn’t globular.) So I will have to use that. Can I make it with just whole goat milk? I’ve been assuming I would need to do half cream and half goat milk. Also, the safe cream I buy contains carrageenan. Is this a problem? I can’t find whole organic cream without it or I would definitely buy it instead. What makes you decide to use egg yolks and starch for one recipe and then not in a different recipe? Do certain factors or ingredients make for better candidates for the ones with or without? Is it possible to use only egg yolks and no starch? I make strawberry goat milk (essentially a homemade milkshake) all the time and it’s so wonderful, I’ve often wondered if I could just churn that as is, perhaps adding more sugar. It comes out rather thick, even after I’ve strained it. I think the strawberry pulp, even refined does wonders. If I forget about it and it sits in the refrigerator too long, it will completely separate into half foam and half liquid. (I’m assuming the top half is the goat milk fat with strawberry component and the bottom half is largely sugar–the polar components–and some more strawberry stuff.) But I still think maybe I ought to try out a very basic plain recipe to learn why it works the way it works so I can build on that. Any help you can give me will be of great help! Thank you!
P.S. I’m super allergic to vanilla so I use white rum largely, and I found that brown sugar and rum make a liquor that is an excellent tasting substitute. My family likes it better in fact. It’s the ethanol bringing out flavors. The organic lemon extract I’ve made in the past has been wonderful. Having a huge number of food allergies, including to several spices, means I have to make basically all of my food!
The short answer to your excellent questions is “yes.” You can absolutely use goat’s milk to make your ice cream. My choice as to whether to use starch, yolks or a combination in my bases is largely about what flavor the ice cream will be. I generally like to leave the yolks out in fruity bases since the yolk can dampen the fruit flavor. When I want a super-rich ice cream, I use a lot of yolks. The enemy of ice cream is free water, so the more you can do to bind up the water, the smoother your ice cream will be, especially after sitting in the freezer for a day or two. Starch does a fantastic job of binding up water, so I often use some even if I’m using yolks, just to get the smoothest, creamiest consistency I can. But yes, you can absolutely just use yolks. If you can have corn syrup, add a splash or two to your base. It will inhibit crystallization too, and you might find it helpful, especially if you don’t want to use the starch.
I would absolutely encourage you to churn the strawberry goat’s milk. Adding more sugar will help keep it softer, as well. My rule of thumb, and again this is just a starting point, is roughly 1/4 cup sugar per cup of dairy. I usually use a bit more than that since sweet flavors are deadened in the freezer.
Oh, and I love your solution to using vanilla extract–brown sugar/rum=brilliant!
Hope that helps!
Thank you so much! Sorry for such a long post. D: I learned to make strawberry jam/preserves (depending on straining or blending here) a couple of months ago. And I found that if I keep it from going very hot, and do several cook downs in a shallow pan, it does just fine without any outside addition of pectin. (I read that pectin is destroyed by too much heat. And I put the lid on at the first with a little extra water to make sure the sugar gets inverted.) This also makes it so that I don’t have to make it too sweet. So good on homemade biscuits! And it made awesome–my very first–scones. So I thought about layering the jam in when I go to transfer it to a container to go in the freezer. Then I thought about those not so great little swirl cups of ice cream we’d get when I was a kid, and I thought I could just make plain goat milk ice cream and layer it with the jam for strawberry swirl! I’ve always noticed that super cold things never taste as sweet. I found that out as a teenager trying to make some sort of popsicle with mostly juice. I also have never liked eating hot cookies or brownies since they never taste as sweet to me either. Thanks again!! 🙂
I think you’re layering idea will work great! Keep me posted. 🙂
There’s a major typo in your recipe. Step one is identical to step two, and there is no direction on the “milk mixture.” (Do you just mix the cream and milk in a bowl? Do they need to be heated?)
That’s what I get for copying/pasting from the recipe provided. I’ll make those fixes, and thank you for letting me know!
Following Lindsay’s Twitter
Liked Lindsay’s FB page
I make ice cream every summer. Usually vanilla and then drop in fresh fruit.
Nice! Nothing better than summer fruit ice cream!
I’m following on Twitter!
I’m following on Facebook!
Yes, I have made chocolate, with and without wallnuts or pecans, and a few other flavors,…but I want to make more!
A worthy goal, Jodee! More ice cream! =)
It’s been a long time, but I used to make an amazing ice cream with fresh Texas peaches.
Oh, peach ice cream is one of the great joys of summer, Kerrey! Yum!
I have made homemade ice cream! Just not often, I think I need a better machine. 🙁 I did make a mocha fudge ripple that was pretty memorable though. 🙂
Whoa! Mocha fudge ripple *sounds* pretty memorable, Jeanine!
I liked scoops adventure!
I have made vanilla and strawberry ice cream before!
sounds like now it’s time for chocolate! =)