Yuzu & Strasberry, Juicy Fruit For Ice Cream

Most of the people who visit my ice cream recipes website look for recipes to make their own delicious homemade ice cream and generally speaking the most popular searches are for vanilla and chocolate. Fruit ice cream flavors are further down the list with strawberry at the top followed by banana. Other fruits are less popular and that's probably because most of them make better sorbets than traditional creamy ice cream (or gelato).

Juicy fruits are wonderful of course in their own right and my favorite is a classic, simple fresh fruit cocktail with apple, pear, pineapple and nectarine. So when I read a news item announcing a fruit that I've never heard of before, it grabs my immediate attention. This week I came across just such a new fruit - the Yuzu.

Regarded by some (apparently) as the world's sexiest fruit and favored by many top chefs in their cuisine, the yuzu is a citrus fruit that originates from East Asia. It looks like a small grapefruit and tastes a little like one with a hint of mandarin and lemon. The good thing about the yuzu is that one piece of the fruit has 3 times more vitamin C than a standard lemon. Popular in East Asia for a long time, yuzu is set to become much more commonplace on Western restaurant menus and as a flavoring in foods on supermarket shelves. So what about yuzu ice cream?

orange sorbet

Well, I haven't as yet made some but when I do I will probably use my simple orange sorbet recipe as a guideline - ie:

a) make a sugar syrup from water, sugar and zest
b) when thoroughly chilled, add to it the yuzu juice
c) transfer to the ice cream maker for churning/freezing

More details on my sorbet recipes page here.

It's not the first time I've got excited about a new fruit and how to make it into ice cream. Back in 2008, I had great fun with a batch of fresh strasberries (that's no typo, I really mean strasberries!).

Within 48 hours of reading a news article I had got hold of some strasberries and made my own strasberry ice cream. Sweet, chunky and creamy it was one of the best fruit ice creams I've ever had.

Rainforest Fruit, 9 ball pool & Roald Dahl

So .... what's the connection between a rainforest expedition to Madagascar, the 2007 9 ball pool World Championship and the author Roald Dahl? The answer .... fruit! One of the most important ingredients in ice cream making is fruit and because of that I always seem to prick up my ears whenever fruit is discussed in conversation around me or on tv. In the last week, fruit - especially the peach - has been the common theme in my everyday life.

First, the movie 'James and the Giant Peach' (based on the wonderful book by Roald Dahl) was on tv a couple of days ago, then I heard my husband and son discussing the recent 9 ball pool world championship and how it was won by a rank outsider, Englishman Daryl Peach. How's that for a great memorable name for a sports champion!

Then, yesterday, I chanced upon a fascinating tv documentary called 'Madagascar - A Treetop Odyssey' which followed the work of a group of scientists studying the Madagascar Rainforest - one of the last unspoilt rainforests on earth. They were looking for - and indeed discovering - new species of animals and plants.

I had tuned into the program about 1/2 way through and had only 10 minutes to spare before having to prepare dinner but in that quick 10 minutes what I saw made me smile - it was all about fruit. One of the scientists tasks was to look for and test new fruits found growing in the rainforest and he was interviewed whilst cutting and tasting some of what they had found. Apparently whatever he found to be an interesting new taste would then be passed on and recommended for commercial ice cream and yogurt making. There was one new fruit which the scientist had tested and described as milky and creamy yet exotic (it looked to me a little like a lime in size and colour) and about which he was very excited because of how well it might work with strawberries in combination for a new ice cream. I listened hard for the name of the fruit but alas none was mentioned. Perhaps before very long and if the scientist is right, we will see it being cultivated (though not at the expense of rainforest depletion and damage) and sold on a larger scale. If and when my local grocery store has it on the shelves I aim to be the first to buy some and try in my homemade ice cream making!