Get Baked: Lemon Mascarpone Ice Cream

Okay ‘Straddlers, I’m going to level with you. This recipe is not very healthy. And it’s not very practical, as it’s frozen, so you can’t really take it anywhere. The ingredients put kind of a dent in my food budget, which I justified because I had planned on making it as a birthday present BUT THEN it was so delicious that I kept “tasting” it over and over “to make sure it was still fresh” and then the container was so full of guilty little scoop marks that I had to give my friend something else. Live and learn.

All that said, it’s summer where I am, and this is refreshing and the color of sunbeams and allows you to say “mascarpone” over and over again like the cheesiest gondolier (“mass-car-POH-nay”! Not this way). It’s also not very hard to coax into existence. Here’s how you do it.

Ingredients:

20 oz heavy cream
2 tbsp sugar
8 oz mascarpone
10 oz lemon curd (~1 jar)
2 lemons

CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS

CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS

You will also need: an electric beater or whisk, a very large bowl, and a zester. An ice cream maker is not strictly necessary, but is helpful for maximum creaminess. PRO TIP: chill your metal accoutrements (beater attachments, whisk) for a while before using for maximum efficacy.

Directions:

  1. Pour the cream and sugar into a bowl and beat/whisk it until it thickens up and soft peaks form.

    whipped cream

    SOFT PEAKS.

  2. Add the mascarpone in dollops. Continue beating between dollops until it’s all incorporated. Tasting at this stage is fun if you like pretending to be a really wealthy cat.
  3. Add the lemon curd! Stir it in realllllly well, especially if you’re not using an ice cream maker — if it separates out, it’ll sink to the bottom while it’s freezing.
  4. Zest all the yellow off one of those lemons and add it to your potion.

    BALD LEMON.

    THAT IS ONE BALD LEMON

  5. Juice that lemon right into the bowl. Then juice the other one too. Give it a last stir.
  6. Choose your own adventure time! Here’s where you turn it over to your ice cream maker, if you have one. If you don’t, put it in an airtight container and stick it in the freezer overnight! It’ll be less airy, like a frozen custard, but no less delicious.

    WHY HELLO THERE

    WHY HELLO THERE

  7. Give it to your friend for her birthday EAT IT ALL YOURSELF. It’s delicious, especially with fresh fruit or a fruit-based sauce.

Happy summer everybody!

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Cara

Cara is a former contributing editor for Autostraddle and a current staff writer at Atlas Obscura. She lives in Somerville with her girlfriend, their roommate, and a cat who can flush the toilet, and is generally thinking about gender, sustainable biodiversity, and/or rock & roll music. You can follow her on twitter @cjgiaimo if you want.

Cara has written 113 articles for us.

10 Comments

  1. ooh, that sounds delicious! now, where to find mascarpone cheese and lemon curd in spain..

  2. um, YES.
    i’m going to have to find mascarpone and make this on a good day because yes, please.

  3. Oh wow, that looks lovely. Not easy to get a hold of the ingredients here in Alaska, but I still will save the recipe and make this someday.

  4. Sounds delicious!

    If you’re feeling lazy (or just don’t want to wait), Nigella has a really similar recipe for a lemon meringue fool:

    1. Whisk together sugar and double cream (or mascarpone – one of my friends doesn’t like cream so I used mascarpone instead and it turned out really well).
    2. Mix together lemon curd and some lemon juice (or limoncello if you’re fancy).
    3. Break up some pre-bought meringues (I’m faaaaar too lazy to make them myself).
    4. Mix the cream/mascarpone, lemon mixture and broken meringues together.
    5. Eat and die happy.

Comments are closed.