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When the citrus season is in full swing, I can’t resist mixing up a batch of this creamy ice cream. The tart lemon with the sweet cream is a combination that is refreshing and rich at the same time. Nothing beats having a carton of homemade ice cream stashed in the freezer.
NO ICE CREAM MACHINE NEEDED!
Serve over your favorite cake or by itself. This dessert can compete and beat any ice cream served in a fancy restaurant.
This lemon ice cream is smooth, velvety rich with a note of tartness and sweetness at the same time. Perfect on its own or as an addition for your vanilla cake, blondies, cookies, etc.
The idea of making this ice cream was born when I catered a wedding in early fall.
I served it with a white lavender cake with lemon cream cheese frosting. This ice cream was a fantastic addition to this wedding cake. And be honest with you, lemon is good any time of the year and beautifully can pair with most desserts.
Lemon Sorbet vs Lemon Ice Cream
The frozen lemon flavor treat we see most often is a sorbet and very rarely do you encounter lemon ice cream.
Sorbet does not contain any dairy products and is more acidic, which results in sour flavors. Sorbet is great for summer on its own, but ice cream is perfect too. I love fruity desserts including fruit inspired ice cream.
Lemon ice cream is creamy and rich with an unexpected fresh brightness from the lemon.
What are the challenges with making Lemon Ice Cream & how to avoid them?
The truth is for people who are cooking and making custards often, they know acid can curdle the milk. And as a result instead of creamy, silky and velvety smooth ice cream you can end up with a ricotta consistency mess, yucky! Right?
To avoid this, follow the rule of properly tempering the egg yolks. This is very important, so there is no rushing of this process. Also, using cream only and not milk because it reduces the chance of curdling since cream has a lot less dairy protein than milk. Remember this:
Milk + Acid = Buttermilk. Also, it's important to add the lemon juice at the end of the ice cream making process.
What do I need to make Lemon Ice Cream?
Cream - heavy cream, also called heavy whipping cream, and I like this brand, because it has less additives than other organic creams.
Lemon - fresh lemons, not from a bottle, the real fruit. No short cuts here, please!
Egg yolks - as always choose the best qualify eggs that you can afford.
Sugar -I like to use white sugar for this, organic cane sugar is always my first choice and is better for your health than beet sugar. Why? All beet sugar in the US is GMO plus the chemicals called paraquat (Gramoxone SL 2.0) and glyphosate (Roundup) are used to spray the crop, which is deathly bad for our bodies.
Notes on storing Lemon Ice Cream
This ice cream like any other ice cream can be easily stored in your freezer for a good 3 months. I like to freeze my ice cream in individual containers for easy serving. They give the appearance of store bought ice cream and are easy to clean as well as staked on top of each other.
The quantity of this recipe is large and will be great for a big family, but if you don't need this much just divide it.
More Ice Cream recipes
Let's do it...
Prep time: 5 minutes
Making time: 20-30 minutes
Waiting time: 4-6 hours
Author: Innichkachef.com
Ingredients
10 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 cups cane sugar or more if you like very sweet
2 tablespoons lemon zest
8 egg yolks
Directions
First gently bring the cream to a boil along with the lemon zest. Mix it all together. Watch the cream closely because just like milk, it can easily boil over the pot.
Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks and sugar in an electric mixer with a whisk attachment until the mixture becomes a very pale color.
Add hot cream to the egg yolk mixture very carefully and slowly. It is very important to start with little spoonfuls and increase the amount as you go. Add the hot cream while the mixer is running at the highest speed. Slow the speed when half of your cream has been added.
After all cream has been added, pour the entire mixture back into the same pot and using low heat start cooking. At this point don't leave the pot but stir constantly using a hand whisk. Cook for 5-6 minutes or until you feel resistance and your cream mixture begins to thicken. Now you have produced custard.
Add lemon juice, and whisk all together.
Pour into an ice cream container and freeze for several hours. It took 6 hours with the container I used.
Scoop, garnish with lemon zest and serve! This little tool will help you.
I hope you'll make this recipe soon. If you do, please tag me #innichka_chef on Instagram,Facebook, Patreon, or Pinterest.