Lemon Sour Cream Ice Cream

Over the past two years of making ice cream, I have figured out that ice cream is not just for dessert.  It can be a snack, lunch, or palate cleanser.  Recently I made ice cream for breakfast.  Why not? 

A couple weeks ago, my other half and I decided to enter a cooking contest with a brunch theme.  Given that ice cream is my forte, we decided that ice cream would be incorporated into the dish in some way.  The final recipe was Baked French Toast with Fresh Strawberry Compote and Sour Cream Ice Cream. Yum.  What I liked the best about this dish was the contrast between hot and cold.  It made it a little challenging to serve, but the flavors were spot on.  We even won an award!  The organizers of the contest felt that our dish best embodied the spirit of the Food Experiment.

When making and testing batches of sour cream ice cream, it was important to me that the resulting ice cream taste like tangy sour cream not sweet cream.  While making one batch, I accidentally added too much lemon zest.  The result was an tangy and lemony concoction, perfect for my freezer but not the competition.  So today I share with you the recipe for Lemon Sour Cream Ice Cream.

Lemon Sour Cream Ice Cream

If you would prefer this ice cream to taste more like sour cream than lemon, reduce the lemon zest to 1/4 teaspoon.  It will still add a little flavor but not over power the sour cream.

1 cup half & half
1 pound (16 ounces) Sour Cream
1 2/3 cup (330 grams) sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest (about 1/2 a lemon)

In a medium saucepan, combine half & half and sugar and heat over medium heat until sugar dissolves completely.  Remove from heat and whisk in sour cream until smooth and completely incorporated.  Zest lemon directly over bowl and then stir to combine.  Chill mixture in refrigerator until fully chilled (about 2 hours).

Pour ice cream base into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.  Pack the ice cream into a plastic container.  Press a sheet of plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the ice cream and close with an airtight lid.  Freeze until firm, about 4 hours.

Comments

[lyndsay]

Love it! I just made a sour cream ice cream too... I love the tanginess of the sour cream... goes great with a sour and fragrant fruit such as lemon. In your experiments, did you try using the juice of the lemon too? I love the idea of using just zest too.

[Lindsay]

Lyndsay - I did not try using lemon juice because I did not want to add water to the mix but I'm sure it would work. You would probably need to add more juice since its less concentrated in flavor than the zest.