Hey there! Sorry this is late; we had relatives in town and time just ran away from me. Speaking of relatives, the final round of this one was actually made by my sister-in-law. We were going over for dinner and she wanted to make ice cream Sean could have. Since she had a bunch of strawberries, I sent her this recipe, with the warning that I hadn’t tested the changes I was sending her. Fortunately for us all, it turned out :D. In fact, it turned out twice, since I made another batch in order to take a picture for this post. So, two people have made it and it was great both times! That being said, I realize strawberries are out of season, so you may not make this for a while. It’s worth using fresh strawberries at least for the cup that you mix in near the end. Ones that have already been frozen just aren’t good for that. You could make the syrup out of frozen ones, though. That shouldn’t matter a bit. One way or the other, I hope you enjoy it!

Natural Sugar Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 5 TBS Agave Nectar
• 4 c chopped fresh strawberries
• 3 c half and half
• 5 large egg yolks
• scant 1/8 tsp salt

Directions

1. Combine 3 cups of the chopped strawberries and all of the agave nectar in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Simmer, stirring very frequently (you probably shouldn’t leave eyeshot, as sugars do tend to boil up and they’re horribly annoying to clean up when they do) until the strawberries have broken down some and it looks nice and syrupy. This takes 10 to 15 minutes, generally.

2. Remove the syrup from the heat and let it stop boiling. Add 1 1/2 cups half and half and bring the mixture back to very warm, but do not boil. Transfer the entire concoction to a mixing bowl.

3. Put the rest of the half and half in the wiped-out saucepan with the salt and warm it so that it feels very hot when you put a finger in it.

4. Put the egg yolks in a medium bowl and whisk until well combined. Slowly pour the warm half and half with salt into the yolks while whisking constantly, then pour the whole to-do back into the saucepan.

5. Cook this mixture over medium heat until it thickens (we’re making a custard base here :D). Once thickened (about 3-5 minutes), remove it from the heat and add the strawberry syrup and mix it well.

6. Let this cool to about room temperature, then put it in the fridge until well chilled (this may take a while, and it’s okay to just let it sit overnight, so long as you put saran touching the top so it doesn’t get one of those nasty milk skins). From here, proceed as the directions on your ice cream maker tell you in order to make this custard into ice cream! Add the last cup of chopped strawberries when the ice cream in the maker is roughly milkshake consistency (in mine this is at about 20 min.). You can now eat it as soft-serve or harden it off in the freezer. Enjoy!