Homemade Ice Cream: July 31-August 7, 2025
It’s summertime, and it’s been ridiculously hot where I live, so we’re going to stretch the definition of “art” this week. Make your own, unique, homemade ice cream flavor. Submit photos of the process and the final product, as well as your review of how you thought it turned out.
The Submissions:
by Journal Kurtz
Aperol Splitz:
Blend together peach ice cream, strawberries, Prosecco, Aperol, milk, frozen banana. Top with whipped cream (optional).
by The Kilsigliere
I’m in Montana this week, so unfortunately don’t have a way of making ice cream very easily. But, I am eating a lot of ice cream, as one does on a summer vacation.
In the spirit of the challenge, I had two flavors new to me-black licorice and huckleberry at the Big Dipper in Missoula.
Huckleberry is ubiquitous in Montana in the summer. You see them growing near all over the woods, near the rivers, (grizzlies love’em too). Every bakery has huckleberry pie/muffins/jam. The farmers market sells them, foraged, but the pound. I’ve eaten them four times already on this trip. I thought they’d look like blackberries, but they actually look more like blueberries. The flavor is more intense, sweet, and a tiny bit sour. Ice cream version 10/10
Black licorice is one of my favorite things to eat, the stronger the better. I’ve never had black licorice ice cream before. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t strong enough for me. I like a licorice that becomes almost savory, with that dark molasses flavor. This was pretty, but just too mild, I think it could have benefited from some licorice mix-ins. Maybe this is a flavor I’ll attempt to make back home. 5/10
We’re all screaming for ice cream in Big Sky Country.
-The Kilsigliere
by Captain Quillard
I had never made homemade ice cream before, save for watching my parents do it more than 40 years ago with an electric churner.
I had very low expectations for my first effort, and I am legitimately shocked at how well these turned out.
I came up with three different flavors:
Coffee Luxardo Cherry Chocolate
Maple Oreo Caramel Bourbon
Strawberry Basil Cinnamon
All turned out surprisingly good. I tasted them before freezing, and was worried they weren’t sweet enough, despite the sweetened condensed milk and the sugary add-ins.
I also worried that they didn’t have enough of each add-in - the flavor seemed too subtle before freezing.
And, I was not at all convinced that the consistency would turn out right, given that each still had a slightly thicker than whipped cream viscosity before freezing.
All of those concerns turned out to be wrong - the consistency came out just like store-bought ice cream, the flavors stood out more than I thought they would, and they were all plenty sweet without being cloying.
A few individual notes on each flavor:
Coffee Luxardo Cherry Chocolate
My only ding here is that the coffee flavor may have needed some sugar to even it out. Autocrat coffee syrup (a New England staple!) is made to mix into sweet things, so it is not very sweet itself. This flavor was still great, but the coffee notes were just slightly bitter. The coffee combined with Luxardo cherries and their syrup makes for a rich, almost cocktailish flavor, punctuated here and there by bits of chocolate. Not bad!
Maple Oreo Caramel Bourbon
While maybe the least creative of my flavors, this one may be the best. You can take this as a positive or a negative, but I may have slightly too many Oreo bits, because they tend to drown out the other flavors a bit. The maple syrup and caramel blend nicely to create a flavor not present in your typical “cookies and cream” ice cream, and the splash of bourbon may have been unnecessary, but adds a little something extra to random bites. Overall, very good - could maybe have been better with either fewer Oreos or more maple and caramel.
Strawberry Basil Cinnamon
This one tastes like summer. It’s subtler and less sweet than the others, but it turned out great. My original idea didn’t include cinnamon, but it ended up being a great addition that adds some complexity and keeps this from tasting like you’re eating tomatoes. The one slight issue here is that this flavor came out way more frozen hard than the other two, and required me to leave it out on the counter for nearly two hours before I could begin to get a scoop into it. At first I thought that was because I’d put it on a different shelf in the freezer than the others, but I’m starting to think it’s because of the fresh strawberries I pureed. Biting into this ice cream gives a different texture than the softness of the other two - it was a familiar, icier texture, and I eventually realized that it’s the same kind of texture you get with frozen berries. So there’s likely something about the way the strawberries freeze that made this one so completely frozen and gave it a different mouthfeel than the others. Still, despite wishing it was smooth and creamy like the others, this flavor turned out great.
Next Week’s Assignment:
Make a “cootie catcher” fortune teller. Find a way to pick your numbers or other choices at random (online randomizer, dice, pieces of paper in a hat, whatever) and use the cootie catcher to make an actual decision for you this week. Submit a photo of your catcher, along with proof of or a short story about how the decision impacted your week.