Food Lust People Love: Fresh Cherry Ice Cream

This fresh cherry ice cream is made with ripe cherries, sugar and whipped cream. So easy and delicious, no churning required. Gin optional! The flavor of my favorite summer fruit shines through.

Food Lust People Love: This fresh cherry ice cream is made with ripe cherries, sugar and whipped cream. So easy and delicious, no churning required. Gin optional! The flavor of my favorite summer fruit shines through.

I have so many favorite summer fruits that it really is hard to choose just one but fresh cherries are definitely in my top three, along with figs and watermelon. You just can’t buy cherries or figs any other time where I live and watermelon grown out of season or imported is usually not very sweet, which is always disappointing.

Last summer I got lucky though because I came across whole boxes of cherries at a discounted price and we ate like cherry kings for almost two weeks. Most of them were eaten straight from the box but the rest were turned into muffins, jam, tarts and, finally, this very ice cream.

Fresh Cherry Ice Cream

If you don’t have fresh cherries, I’d substitute frozen ones but make sure to pit them if they aren’t already pitted. And doublecheck that the pitting process didn’t miss any pits if they are. Nothing will break a tooth faster than biting down on a hard cherry pit when you weren’t expecting one!

Ingredients

12.5 oz or 354g cherries

1 cup or 240ml water

3/4 cup or 150g sugar

1 2/3 cups or 393ml whipping cream

Optional: 2 tablespoons gin – I used strawberry infused gin for more fruity flavor

Method

Pit the cherries. Chop them roughly (which helps to check for pits you might have missed!) and set aside a few for garnish for when you are freezing the ice cream later.

Pulse the cherries briefly in a food processor. You want small chunks, NOT puree.

In a pot large enough to hold the cherry chunks, dissolve the sugar in the water over a medium high heat and then heat to boiling.

Add in the cherries.

Cook until the liquid is reduced by about half and the temperature just reaches 220°F or 104°C. This could take as many as 20-25 minutes.

Remove the cherries from the heat and transfer them to another vessel to cool.

Once they are cool, whip the cream to soft peaks.

Gently fold a couple of spoonsful of the cream into the cooled cherries.

Then fold the cherries and cream into the rest of the cream.

Gently does it! You don’t want to deflate the air in the whipped cream.

Add the gin, if using, and fold again. This isn’t essential but I think it makes the ice cream easier to scoop and serve.

Spoon the ice cream into a freezer friendly container with a lid. Top with the reserved chopped cherries then cover and freeze until set.

Remove from the freezer 15-20 minutes before you want to serve it.

Enjoy!

Welcome to the 9th edition of Alphabet Challenge 2025, brought to you by the letter I. Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for organizing and creating the challenge. Check out all the I recipes below: