satisfied
Another hot day in the neighborhood, and I had to do something to make it a little more pleasant. I took a pound of whole Washington Red Cherries and washed, stemmed, sliced them in half, and pitted them. Then I washed my hands until they were only slightly more pink than normal. I tossed half of the cherries into a blender. Into the blender I put the zest of half a lime. I also squeezed in the juice from two limes. Then, I blended, or at least pushed a button on the blender, and had it do some blending. Next I added something to sweeten it further. I used 13 drops of liquid splenda. That is about the same as 1/2 cup of sugar sweetness wise. Next I tossed 8 ounces of rich tasty mascarpone cheese goodness into the blender and pushed the botton again. Once that was nicely blended together I poured in 1 cup of whipping cream and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract and the blender was put to work again.
I prepared the ice cream maker, gave one more blast on the blend button and poured the mixture into the ice cream maker. I let the ice cream maker do its thing, until it was almost ice cream (a little more frozen than soft ice cream - in this case it took 10 minutes) then I dropped in the rest of the cherries so that it was distributed fairly evenly. The fresh cherries brought up the temperature of the mixture a bit and it softened a bit. About 7 minutes later everything had solidified enough that the ice cream maker was straining to turn. I stopped it and dished it up for the family. It was delicious. The ice cream was cold and creamy, the half cherries were cold, but not frozen and still had a very nice consistency. I loved the color. I ate a bowl and declared the experiment a success.
Edit 8/11/07: I made it again, and did not have mascarpone cheese in the house. I added the zest from 1 1/2 limes this time, and I used Trader Joe's Greek Style Cheese Yogurt, which has a taste similar to sour cream, but a texture closer to mascarpone. This version was also delicious.
