Plum Ice Cream

This past December, D got me an ice cream maker for Hanukkah. “So that you’ll have a way to make us ice cream when summer rolls around.” That D’s pretty smart: ice cream makers are much cheaper in the dead of winter, but summer inevitably returned, and now tubs of ice cream line our freezer. What flavors, you ask? Well, currently we have wild honey, raspberry sorbet, apricot sorbet, and this here plum that I’m getting ready to tell you about. I’ve had some lovely organic plums in my fridge for a couple weeks. Most of them I took for lunch, but something had to be done with the rest. I’d gone back and forth between stone fruit crisp and plum tart tatin, until I remembered that The Perfect Scoop was sitting on my bookshelf, gathering dust. Sure enough, David Lebovitz had included in it a recipe for plum ice cream; the fate of my plumlings was decided.

Here’s the thing about fruit ice creams: they’re not chocolate. Now don’t you vanilla fans jump on me all at once — I appreciate a good bowl of white. (Scratch that: off-white. If it’s vanilla, it has to be custard-based, in my humble-o.) But people, chocolate and I are exclusive. We’re in love. And that’s just how it is. So you can understand why fruit ice cream has always seemed a little, well, not-quite-right to me — that is, until I made some myself. Plum ice cream is stupendous! Wonderfully creamy, sweet and tart, with all the assets of stone fruit and of ice cream in one. I’m a little obsessed.

With plums at every farmers’ market in town, now’s the time to try this one out.

Plum Ice Cream
from David Lebovitz in The Perfect Scoop

• 1 pound plums (about 8 )
• 1/3 cup water
• 3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 tsp. kirsch

Slice the plums in half and remove the pits. Cut the plums into eighths and put them in a medium, nonreactive saucepan with the water. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 8 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar until dissolved. Let cool to room temperature.

Once cool, puree in a blender or food processor with the cream and kirsch until smooth.

Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.