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We don’t get raspberries here as often as we do blackberries and ollalieberries. But one day this past summer, Simon came home from the market with the most fragrant of raspberries… He got four punnets for $12—not cheap!—although high quality and organic, from Borba Farms. It was barely over a pound of fruit, so not enough for preserving. Why not ice cream, then?

Churning, churning.

This is a variation of blackberry ice cream, except here the vanilla sugar is intrinsic for the flavor. The vanilla really highlights the raspberry’s natural floral aromas, which is necessary for such a delicate fruit—compared with blackberries. Interestingly enough, I had to use quite a bit more sugar than in the blackberry recipe, as the fruit became intensely more tart upon heating. The nice trade off was not needing to use a potato masher, since raspberries are coreless, so took less time to pulp down.

This recipe yielded over a quart of ice cream, nearly but not quite overflowing the canister. 😉

Ingredients

• 1 to 1 1/4 pounds fresh raspberries, gently rinsed and drained
• 1/3 cup vanilla sugar
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, but adjust as needed
• a pinch of salt
• 3 egg yolks, lightly beaten

Method

1. Place the raspberries and vanilla sugar in a small, acid-resistant sauce pan, and simmer uncovered over medium to low heat until pulped down (about 15 to 20 minutes). Set aside to cool and infuse.
2. Make the custard: In a medium sauce pan, stir together the cream, milk, sugar, and salt over medium heat until barely simmering.
3. Temper the egg yolks by whisking in a couple ladlefuls of the hot cream mixture. Pour the yolk mixture into the sauce pan, and whisk until the custard becomes silky-thick. An instant-read thermometer is great for testing this, because the texture typically occurs around 170º to 175ºF degrees.
4. Pour the custard through a very fine-meshed strainer to remove any curdled bits.
5. At this point, we usually switch to a slightly larger mesh strainer, to remove the seeds from the raspberry sauce. This can be rather slow, squishing and squeezing out as much liquid as possible (we used a large metal spoon).
6. Gently whisk the raspberry custard, cover and chill for at least 6 hours. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions—about 30 to 33 minutes in our Cuisinart maker.