Quick and Easy Homemade Cherry Ice Cream

a crappy picture of some yummy ice cream

We won a Soda Stream for best costumes at the Halloween 5k last fall, and lately Mr M has been experimenting with making his own syrups to use as soda flavorings. His latest try involved boiling and simmering some cherries, then squeezing the juice out of the cherries and using that in a syrup for cherry soda. The meat of the cherries was left over and we didn't want to just throw it away, so Mr M put it in a container to use for something else.

A day or two later, he hit on the perfect use for those cherries. He made ice cream for his birthday and put the cherries in it. 20 minutes in our Cuisinart ice cream maker, and we had some really yummy cherry ice cream. I don't usually like cherry ice cream, but that's because maraschino cherries are frequently used, and they are so gross. Real sweet cherries make delicious ice cream!

We really like this recipe because it only has a few ingredients and comes together so quickly. We've made custard-based ice creams before, but they take time- you have to cook the base properly, then wait for it to cool before it can go in the ice cream maker. Removing eggs from the equation simplifies things immensely.

Quick and Easy Homemade Cherry Ice Cream

2 cups Half and Half
2 cups Heavy Cream
1 cup Sugar
1 cup Cherries, pitted and roughly chopped

Mix the half and half, cream, and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Carefully pour the mixture into the frozen ice cream maker bowl. Be careful not to fill the bowl too full. When the ice cream reaches soft serve consistency, add in the cherries. Once the cherries are fully incorporated, scrape the ice cream into a container and place in freezer until ready to eat.