Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

A little labor-intensive, but SO worth it.


Taken straight from this blog.  Have you visited them yet?

 3 c. fresh blueberries (or frozen works too)
1/4 c. powdered sugar
1/4 c. water
2 c. sugar
6 oz. light cream cheese, softened*
4 egg yolks
3 c. 2% milk*
1 c. half and half*
Optional: 1 prepared graham cracker crust

*If you don't care about the calories (and you really shouldn't when making home made ice cream!) use full-fat cream cheese and substitute heavy cream for the half and half and whole milk for the 2%. It makes it soooooo good.

In a small saucepan, combine blueberries, powdered sugar, and water. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes and then remove from heat and allow to cool completely.
In a large saucepan, combine milk and half and half (or cream and whole milk if you're taking that route). Bring to a boil and then remove from heat.

While milk is heating, combine cream cheese, egg yolks, and sugar in a bowl and mix well.After you have removed milk mixture from heat, very slowly pour half of the milk mixture into the egg yolk mixture while the beater is running. This is called tempering the eggs, meaning that you're slowly acclimating them to heat so you can cook them without them curdling. Mix the egg mixture well and then add the tempered egg mixture back into the hot milk mixture. Over medium-low heat and stirring very often, cook to 160 degrees (use a candy thermometer; 160 degrees is considered safe for most animal products, eggs included). Remove from heat.

Place pan in ice--I actually just put the pan in my sink and then dumped a whole bunch of ice all around it; hey, it's one less dish for me to clean!
Allow to cool to a touchable temperature and then add those gorgeous blueberries and all of the liquid with them. Combine completely and put in the fridge for several hours until well chilled. Because this ice cream is a little more labor intensive that most, I make it up to this step one or even 2 days ahead of time. That way when you're ready to freeze it, it's well chilled and will be ready faster!

Freeze according to manufacturer's instructions. After churning it will be like soft-serve. Place in an air-tight container in the freezer to let it set up.

If you're adding the graham cracker crust: While the ice cream maker is working its magic, go ahead and break up the graham cracker crust. Leave some bigger chunks--the ice cream maker will break them down.

When the ice cream is very thick, add the pieces of graham cracker crust and then stop the motor as soon as the crust pieces have been mixed in. Transfer to a freezer-safe container (I just use a plastic food storage container) and freeze for at least three hours. The real beauty is that for about a week, the longer this sits in your freezer, the better it tastes. So you can make this well in advance if you're having a party.

Another reason why you want to freeze this for as long as possible is because this is pretty soft and seems to have a lower melting temperature than most commercial ice creams.