This recipe was born of the simple idea that these two food items could go well together. We’ve had Chocolate Marshmallow ice cream around for sixty years. Why not Strawberry Marshmallow?

I succeeded far beyond my expectations as measured by the response of friends and loved ones. But before we get to the actual recipe I want to digress into the world of ice cream and why you should make it at home or buy it at locations of small producers and refuse to patronize your supermarket’s ice cream section.

My experiments in making various ice creams improved markedly when Marie bought a gelato maker with it’s own freezing unit and also Ben and Jerry’s® "Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book©." These two things spelled the difference between making okay homemade ice cream and excellent ice cream. Even better, Ben and Jerry explained in detail the world of ice cream and how it is made commercially. All I can say is that after great success I scoff at the low quality ripoff price ice creams in our supermarkets. They are expensive garbage, or, if high quality, then they are absurdly expensive.

Most of the supermarket ice creams are 50% air. A well made ice cream should never be more than 20% to 25% air. Some air content is necessary, however, else the ice cream would be a hard frozen block of liquid.

Those of us fortunate enough to discover small businesses that make their own ice cream very well certainly recognize the huge quality difference. The price is typically high for single servings and there is not the convenience of having the ice cream at home without a special trip to buy hand packed and expensive high quality ice cream. But the small, high quality commercial producers sometimes have excellent bulk ice cream at great prices.

Hayward’s® in Milford NH makes excellent ice cream. It is expensive by the cone or in a sundae, or by the quart, but if you buy the three gallon bulk container it only costs $17. At least it did for me back in 2006. Think about that for a minute. That is less than $6 per gallon, less than $1.50 per quart, for excellent ice cream. Compare those prices to what you find in your supermarket today that is half air. Yes, you should be livid.

So who needs three gallons of one kind of ice cream? Do you have any friends or family nearby? Do you want to be very popular? Be generous, or at least share the product and the cost so people you care about can win too.

Ben and Jerry provide three recipes for a Sweet Cream Base for all the different ice creams. I use a variation of their recipes by using a combination of ingredients from their first two recipes. My chosen combination is shown below. In general, the higher the heavy cream content the richer the ice cream, but the shorter the shelf life. If you make this ice cream you sure won’t have to worry about shelf life!

Oh, note that you can make the Food Nirvana Custard Ice Cream Base as an alternative to making the sweet cream base described below. My, what a fine alternative! Try both methods ... as shown and by using the Custard Ice Cream Base.

Ingredients: (makes a generous 1½ quarts of ice cream)

Sweet Cream Base:

2 Extra large or Jumbo eggs

¾ cup of sugar

2 cups of heavy cream

½ cup of half and half

½ cup of whole milk

Other ingredients:

1½ cups of fresh very ripe strawberries

1/3 cup of Hersheys® Strawberry syrup (used to make strawberry flavored milk)

1½ cups of Marshmallow Crème (see Ray’s recipe in this book)

1/4 cup of sugar

Directions:

You should use a gelato maker to get the best results from this recipe. If you use the old rock salt and ice type of ice cream machine be certain the ice cream is very stiff before the last step of adding the marshmallow crème.

Make the sweet cream base first using your electric mixer. Mix the eggs well and then add the sugar and mix well. Then add the milk and half and half and heavy cream slowly while mixing thoroughly. Cover the mixing bowl and put it into the refrigerator to chill.

Clean and hull the strawberries and cut them into fourths, or more pieces if they are very large strawberries. Mix the sugar with them, cover them with plastic wrap and leave them rest for about one hour in your refrigerator.

Remove half of the strawberry pieces to a bowl and crush them thoroughly with a fork. Partially crush the other strawberries in the original bowl. Recombine all the strawberry sugar mixture and add the Hershey’s® strawberry syrup and mix well with a spoon.

Put all the strawberry mixture into the sweet cream base bowl and mix well by hand. Then put all of that mixture into the gelato maker and turn it on.

A typical gelato maker is advertised as a unit that makes only one quart of ice cream at a time. In reality the available volume of the freezing unit is one and one half quarts. This allows for the expansion of the ice cream as it freezes and takes on air.

Since our goal is to limit the air percentage of the ice cream to about 20 percent, the extra volume we added with the strawberry mixture will be accommodated by the gelato maker.

After about 25 minutes the gelato maker will have soft frozen the strawberry ice cream, almost sufficient to proceed to the next step. Let the gelato maker run for an additional five to ten minutes. Once it is completely filled you may as well use the contents as there is no volume available to introduce more air. You simply wanted to give the fairly large volume of ice cream a chance to become relatively stiff.

Have a two quart good quality freezer container that has a tight fitting lid sitting in ice cubes in a four quart bowl. Scoop the contents from the gelato maker into the freezer container.

Using two teaspoons to aid you in handling the marshmallow crème, dispense the marshmallow crème in rounded teaspoon quantities, four at a time into the ice cream but not touching each other. Gently fold the clumps of marshmallow crème into the ice cream with a wooden spoon until they are covered with ice cream. Repeat this process until the entire one and one half cups of marshmallow crème have been incorporated into the strawberry ice cream evenly.

Cover the freezer container with a tight fitting lid and put it into a deep freeze for four or more hours to complete the freezing process. The ice cream is then ready to serve.

Expect applause. You will get it.

è You can always put the ice cream into the deep freeze for an hour or so before adding the marshmallow crème as that will guarantee that the folded in marshmallow crème will not sink to the bottom of the ice cream container. It all depends on how firmly the ice cream is frozen by the gelato maker.