Lemon Ice Cream
Smooth, silky, salacious. Those are three words that makes a great ice cream. And for the past few years, I’ve tried a handful of times to make ice cream at home, sans machine. But in all my attempts but the last, the ice cream that I made never achieve those three sibilant quality markers.
And it’s that last attempt at making ice cream that blew my mind. Because I used Dori Sanders’s Genius No-Churn Lemon Ice Cream, which sticks true to its name!
I first found the recipe through Food52’s Genius Desserts cookbook, written by the incredibly affable Kristen Miglore. And after trying it once, I never looked back. Because while most homemade ice creams can never achieve that smooth silkiness that store-bought ice cream possesses, this one does. And it’s the combination of the puckery acidity of the lemon, and the richness of the dairy, that naturally thickens the mixture, working it’s magic to make an ice cream that is truly smooth, silky, and salacious.
As Kristen puts it: “As you stir together a handful of ingredients, the acid in lemon juice magically thickens the cream, without whipping or churning. Sugar both balances out the pucker of the lemon and keeps the ice cream from freezing too hard. What all this means is Sanders’ recipe might be both the easiest no-churn ice cream yet, and also one of the smoothest and creamiest. “On a hot, hot, hot, hot summer day, it is the most refreshing ice cream,” Sanders says. “Anyone can make it.””
And truly anyone can make it.
Lemon Ice Cream
Adapted from Dori Sanders’s Genius No-Churn Lemon Ice Cream
makes 1 tub
Ingredients
80ml yuzu or lemon juice.
Zest of 2 lemons
180g caster sugar
2g salt
240g heavy/whippping cream
240g milk
Zest of 1 orange, to garnish
Directions
In a large bowl, whisk together the yuzu juice, lemon zest, caster sugar, and salt.
Pour the cream and milk into a measuring cup, and gently stream it into the sugary yuzu mixture while whisking continuously. Whisk for 1-2 minutes until the sugar dissolves.
Pour the ice cream mixture into a deep pan, and cover with aluminium foil. Then, put it in the freezer for 2-3 hours. Then, remove it from the freezer and stir the mixture around, then pop it back into the freezer to harden for another 2-3 hours, or until it sets completely.
Scoop it out into bowls, and serve with a generous grating of orange zest!