Strawberry season snuck up on me this year. In a good way. We’ve been so busy that I feel like my mind is a few months behind my body. I’m having a hard time remembering I need to wear shorts now and stop grabbing the winter scarves as I walk out the door. (Our trip to Colorado this week, however, quickly put me back in my place… brrr!) Luckily I happened upon a facebook update from our favorite strawberry patch that the early berries were ripe for the picking (literally, guess we know the origins of that cliché). Despite the fact that I had a ton of work to do in anticipation of our trip, I couldn’t ignore the siren call of the strawberries. And I’ll probably go again when we get back because I’m just obsessed like that.
As for what to do with those 7 pounds of beautiful berries, some of them usually find their way into a frozen dessert in one way or another. But since I’m totally not a fruit dessert person, of course I had to find a way to get some chocolate in there too. Because what is good with fruit is going to be even better with chocolate.
The result is this. Fresh strawberry ice cream meets dark chocolate ice cream (with both cocoa powder and melted chocolate, mainly because I couldn’t decide which would give me the richest chocolate flavor so I used both). Granted, the chocolate flavor is stronger than the fruit one, which is why I threw in some strawberry chunks at the end for good measure.
As far as strawberry ice creams go, this one is pretty much top of my list. It may even be the key to household peace: pleasing both the chocolate ice cream lovers AND the strawberry fanatics. If only we could get a vanilla swirl in there we may even attain world peace. With ice cream. Go figure. Total Time: 12 hours
