SSS – Peach Ice Cream

I have two disconnected memories of Peach Ice Cream from my childhood. One, I’m not sure is real but I remember visiting cousins of my mom, at their house on a lake, and having peach ice cream. Another time, I remember our neighbors, across the street, making it in this big wooden thing you had to crank. Not much came out in the end (at least I thought for what you put into it) but what came out (considering I wasn’t a peach ice cream fan – I mean c’mon peach when you can have chocolate?), was pretty darn good.

So other than those two memories, since childhood, I hadn’t really given much thought to eating and/or making peach ice cream.
Of course, that was until the Sunday Slow Scoopers stepped in.
Now let me start off by stating, if you don’t get good peaches, don’t bother with this. Your peaches taste bland, your ice cream tastes bland – there’s no way around that axiom.

So while I’m on the subject of good peaches. Let’s take a moment to educate the masses on how to choose a peach. Never, ever, ever squeeze a peach. I hate to tell people, but odds are most of the peaches in the bins (especially at the supermarkets) aren’t ripe. Squeezing a hard peach, only leaves bruises that won’t appear until the peach actually does ripen – so that perfect peach you bought at the market, a day or two later, will be completely bruised from where you poked and prodded it (or worse yet, my perfect peach will be because some shmo before me squeezed the crap out of it – can you tell I’m passionate about my peaches?). To choose a peach, simply pick it up, gently cupping it in the palm of your hand, and sniff it around the stem. If it smells like peach, even if it’s hard, it will taste like peach. When you get home, stick it in a paper bag on your counter for a day or too and voila, good peach.

So now, once you have your perfect peaches, and they’ve ripened, you can make the ice cream (you need four good size peaches for this recipe, 600 grams or 1 1/3 pounds).

First you peel them. Does anyone have a good method for peeling peaches? Because I gotta tell you, those suckers get slippery as your working your way around them and almost lost a couple to the sink. Once peeled, slice all the way around the peach, dividing it in half and basically pry it apart to get the pit out. Now chunk it and throw it into a non-reactive medium-sized pot, with a half a cup of water and 3/4 cup of sugar. Cook that on the stove for 10 minutes, covered, on a medium flame stirring once or twice during the process. Let it cool to room temp.

Peach Mixture After Blending

Now take your peach mixture and in a blender or food processor (I used a blender), puree that with 1/2 cup of sour cream (I used full fat but may try light or no fat next time to see how it changes the consistency), 1 cup heavy cream, 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla and a couple of drops of fresh-squeezed lemon juice. You want some chunks in this sucker, so don’t puree too long. I think I did mine for a few seconds at most.
Chill the mixture in the fridge – I’ve taken to chilling mine overnight. Stick it in your ice cream machine and let it do it’s thing. That’s it – easy peasy. Oh and Dave says you can do this with nectarines too (follow guidelines above for choosing peaches), but you don’t need to peel them because they soften enough during the cooking process.

Peach Ice Cream w/ Blackberries from the CSA

So here’s my question though: can I make that sugar-syrup peach step and can or freeze it during the summer, then use those all winter long to make fresh peach ice cream? We didn’t go peach picking this summer, but if we do next summer, it may be a good way to use all those peaches!

Update: A 1/3 cup serving is 3 weight watchers points. A 1/2 cup serving is 5 WW points.