This Kahlua Cherry Ice Cream is a delicious addition to my collection of frozen dessert recipes to enjoy every summer! The boozy kick from Kahlua completely elevates the sweet, fruity notes of this ice cream!
I’m sure many of you have stories about going fruit picking as kids. I am no different. I have some great memories of picking berries and cherries with my family in New Zealand and making all kinds of delicious fruit desserts all summer long.
My sister and I would climb up the trees to get to the best cherries and compete with each other to see who ended up with more. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds though, since only two out of every three cherries we picked ever made it to the basket.
Kahlua and cherries are a perfect pairing
There are photographs of us smiling with fistfuls of cherries, red teeth and red lips and all, and red stains down the front of our shirts. My sister had this strange habit of getting “tipsy” after eating one too many and then giggle incessantly.
And even though I always had plans for using the cherries in homemade cherry pie, cherry pie filling, and all kinds of baked goods, that almost never happened. We would just end up eating them all before the cherries ever had a chance to serve a bigger purpose.
There was no cherry picking for Mr K and myself this year, so we waited till they started making an appearance in our local grocery store a few months ago.
And as much as I wanted to just grab those fresh, juicy, sweet cherries and stuff my face full of them, I decided to practice a great deal of self-restraint and give these cherries the credit they deserved and use them in a fantastic recipe! Enter, Kahlua Cherry ice cream!
Kahlua is one of my favourite liqueurs and it’s one of those things that I look for a reason to use in my recipes rather than let the flavour combos come together organically in my head.
That boozy kick completely elevates the sweet, fruity notes of this ice cream and makes it dangerously addictive.
I think I did those beautiful cherries justice in the end though! What do you think? 🙂 I used Bing cherries for this recipe, but any kind of fresh, sweet cherry should work.
Super easy way to pit cherries
If you have a cherry pitter, you’re a lucky duck indeed! If you don’t, do not sweat, there’s another way to pit those bad boys easily! Before I came across this method, I used to cut the cherry and sort of dig out the pit, making everything a “bloody” mess.
This way, it’s still a tiny bit messy, but not nearly as what it used to be for me, and a lot more fun too! 🙂 You will however need a frosting tip (with a round tip) for this pitting method. The tip should preferably be slightly smaller than the size of the pit.
Place the tip on a stable surface, then place the cherry on top of the tip (the stem indent of the cherry) and gently push it down as you see below in the gif, and the pit pops right out.
I covered the working area with thick plastic wrap before I started, in order to catch the juices and to collect the pits.
See? Easy peasy!
Recipe notes
I added a generous 1/4 cup of Kahlua, to give this ice cream a wonderful boozy flavour with just a hint of coffee that perfectly complements and elevates the cherry flavour!
However, the booze also means that it interferes slightly with the freezing process of the ice cream, so you will get a slightly softer ice cream that melts a little faster than regular ice cream.
But hey, what that means in the end though is that you will be just that bit more eager to eat the ice cream. Just as well, because this one tastes so freaking good!
Recipe
Kahlua Cherry Ice Cream
US based cup, teaspoon, tablespoon measurements. Weight measurements are recommended for accurate results whenever available.
Common Measurement ConversionsIngredients:
Cherry Compote
- Fresh cherries 500g / 1.1 lbs, unpitted
- 4 tbsp white sugar
- 1/4 cup water
- 2 tbsp Kahlua optional, you can use coffee instead for a non-alcoholic option
Ice Cream base
- 1 1/4 cup of half and half or full cream milk
- 3 cups pouring cream or whipping cream
- 5 yolks
- 150 g sugar
- Cherry compote that you prepared above
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract or seeds from 1 vanilla pod
- ¼ cup Kahlua or cold coffee
Instructions:
Cherry Compote
- Pit the cherries and halve them. Combine all the ingredients (except Kahlua) in a saucepan.
- Heat until the liquid starts to simmer, and cook for 20 minutes or until the liquid turns syrupy.
- Remove from the heat, let it cool completely and then stir in the Kahlua.
- Keep in the fridge until needed. Best when chilled.
Ice Cream
- Combine the sugar and milk in a saucepan and heat over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved.
- In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the vanilla. Slowly incorporate about ½ cup of the warm milk into the egg yolks, while whisking (tempering the egg yolks). Transfer the egg yolk and milk mix back to the saucepan with the rest of the milk and stir while heating over medium heat.
- Stir regularly to make sure the milk doesn’t catch the bottom, and the eggs don’t curdle. If the mix is heating too fast, lower the heat. The custard is done when it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon and you can swipe a clean path with your finger.
- Stir in the rest of the cream and Kahlua and leave it in the fridge to chill for at least a few hours or overnight.
- Churn according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. During the last 5 minutes, add the cooled/chilled Cherry compote to mix through.
- Transfer to an ice cream tin/container (I used a chilled bread loaf tin) and leave it to harden completely for a few hours.
No Ice-Cream machine? No problem!
- Transfer the custard into a large flat-bottomed dish with a lid and keep it in the freezer.
- Check on the custard and whisk it with a hand-held beater at hourly intervals. Keep doing this until the ice cream hardens in the freezer. You might want to scrape the hardened sides with a fork first before you whisk your ice cream.
- When the custard has thickened and is mostly frozen, add the cherry compote and fold it in.
“This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.”
You will not regret making this ice cream this summer, I’m certain of that. The beautiful cherry chunks swirled through this ice cream, really add to the texture and the overall flavours as well. You just cannot lose with this flavour combo.
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