Homemade artisan ice cream

What screams summer more than ice cream? Absolutely nothing. 'Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream' will have you churning out hip flavors in your own kitchen.

With flavors such as "Earl Grey" and "Palm Sugar," the Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Van Leeuwen ice cream truck is not your run-of-the-mill ice cream stop. Now, you can make their hand-crafted, artisan ice cream flavors at home thanks to their newly released book "Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream" by brothers Ben and Peter Van Leeuwen and business partner Laura O'Neill. Already famous in New York, this book is sure to carry their name around the world with their steadfast commitment to using the best ingredients without additives or preservatives.

With classic flavors such as mint-chocolate chip and strawberry, new takes on old classics (try the spicy Bali chocolate), and completely unique flavors such as the sticky sweet black rice ice cream, there is sure to be a flavor there for every reader. Vegan recipes? They have those, too. But what if – and I have a hard time believing this – you aren’t much of an ice cream person? Have no fear, there are numerous recipes for sorbets and granitas. 

Van Leeuwen and co-authors have thought of everything. In the process of making ice cream bases, it is inevitable that one uses a lot of egg-yolks. So the ice cream team has included a collection of recipes that use lots of egg whites, precluding the need to frantically search Google for “recipes that use a lot of egg whites.”

I decided to branch out of my favorite flavors and try something I’d never tried before: cantaloupe sorbet. With only four ingredients, it seemed like the perfect easy summer recipe. And it was. I just cubed a cantaloupe, added a bit of sugar, lime juice, and lime zest, and blended the ingredients together. Twenty minutes later I was scooping my sorbet base from the ice cream maker. A couple hours in the freezer and I had sorbet the color of summer.

Cheers!

Cantaloupe Sorbet
From "Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream"
Makes about 1 quart 

1 2-lb. cantaloupe
1/2 cup sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon finely grated lime zest
Pinch of kosher salt

1. Place the cantaloupe, sugar, lime juice, lime zest, and salt in a blender and puree until smooth. Transfer the sorbet base to a quart-size container, cover, and refrigerate until fully cold, about 3 hours.

2. Pour the chilled sorbet base into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Place the container in which you refrigerated the sorbet base in the freezer, so you can use it to store the finished sorbet. Churn the sorbet until it resembles Italian ice.

3. Transfer the sorbet to the chilled storage container and freeze until hardened to your desired consistency. The sorbet will keep, frozen, for up to 7 days.

Recipe reprinted with permission from Ecco.