This Saturday, Luke and I made our monthly trip to the farmer’s market to pick up some butter, cream, meat, veggies and fruit. I sampled some of these sun-ripened cherries and knew I had to whip something up with them.

They were ridiculously sweet, soft and juicy, all perfect requirements for some out-of-this-world ice cream! It helped that we also picked up some amazingly thick, creamy heavy cream from a local dairy farm.

You really cannot beat fresh farmer’s market produce.

So back to the cherry/chocolate ice cream. This recipe is super simple to make and resulted in what was seriously the best ice cream I’ve ever had.

The only gadgety thing you need is an ice cream maker. If you don’t have one, I suggest you invest in one immediately! Homemade ice cream is worlds better than store bought.

To make this recipe, you will need the following ingredients:

INGREDIENTS

Start by pitting your cherries. This can be a bit tricky if you don’t have a cherry pitter, but I used the end of a chop stick instead and it worked well.

Next, heat up your milk, one cup cream, cherries and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Once it starts steaming, lower the heat to low and let it sit for 15 minutes.

Then run the mixture through a blender to puree together. Pour the mixture into a large bowl and place in the fridge for a couple hours until it’s cooled throughout.

While the concoction cools, chop up some dark chocolate (I used 85% cacao bars from Trader Joe’s) and about 10 cherries so you’ll have some yummy cherry chunks mixed into the ice cream.

Remove the liquid from the fridge and add the remaining 3/4 cup cream. Pour it into your ice cream maker (make sure you DON’T add the chocolate and cherry chunks at this point. That comes later.) and let it run for 25 minutes.

Your ice cream will be very hard to resist at this point, so you’re best to not even taste it!

It should be soft so you can easily scoop it into an air tight container. Fold the chocolate and cherry chunks into the ice cream and place it in the freezer for 1-2 hours.

When you’re ready to dig in, let it thaw for 5-10 minutes so it’s easily scoop-able. Then just enjoy the awesomeness that is cherry/chocolate ice cream!