When a balmy evening inspires an ice cream craving, it's time for a 60-second soft serve.
Unlike regular ice cream, which requires some combination of muscle, machinery and time, this soft serve whips frozen fruit and a little dairy into a dessert that can - and must - be eaten instantly. It's light and lux with fruit as the star.
It starts with the kind of fruit that's fragrant enough to withstand freezing. Peaches, figs, mangoes and bananas should be ripened to the extreme, cut into blitzable chunks and frozen at home. Strawberries, cherries and blueberries, particularly the tiny ones from Maine, are great purchased frozen and guarantee you're always ready, just in case.
Creamy things, like Greek yogurt, crème fraîche and heavy cream, give the dessert its mouthfeel. Use no more than one part to every three parts fruit. Heavy cream helps weak blenders whip rock-solid fruit, though too much turns the soft serve sloppy. As cravings are by their very nature unplanned, use whatever you have - even if it means ricotta or refrozen icy ice cream.
Did you know?
National Ice Cream Day is July 19. Not just a novelty observance, National Ice Cream Day was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on July 9, 1984. It is celebrated on the third Sunday in July, which is National Ice Cream Month.
Adding sugar is contentious. But even the sweetest peach needs a little bit to become soft serve. Start with a teaspoon of powdered sugar for every cup of fruit, and add more to taste. Bananas don't need much more than this, while berries and cherries routinely take at least 2 teaspoons per cup. If you've incorporated sour cream or crème fraîche, add more. If you're planning to mix in other sweet things, hold back. Slight tartness distinguishes these from store-bought pints.
Dark chocolate chunks, halvah, candied ginger, nuts and cookies can be added to the almost-finished ice cream, and a few pulses of the blender will crush and mix them in. Jams, citrus curds and nut butters ripple through with just one pulse.
Pile it high in chilled glasses, which you can hold in the freezer while you whip cream to go on top. It can stay there for up to 30 minutes before losing its freshly churned allure. But do rush: At room temperature, it'll go from soft to soupy in 10 minutes. Like all of summer's ephemera, it should be inhaled while it lasts.
Strawberry and Sesame Swirl Soft Serve
Yield: 2 servings (about 2 cups)
Total time: 1 minute
2 cups frozen strawberries (about 10 ounces)
1/2 cup full-fat Greek yogurt or labneh
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons tahini
4 teaspoons powdered sugar
1/4 cup sesame halvah (about 2 ounces), plus more for garnish
Place the strawberries, yogurt, cream, tahini and sugar in a blender or food processor, and blitz, scraping down the sides as needed, until smooth.
Crumble the halvah on top, and stir through to distribute. Serve in chilled glasses with more halvah crumbled on top. Eat quickly.