The Best Strawberry Ice Cream

This is the best homemade strawberry ice cream. Pure creamy, dreamy perfection bursting with the flavor of fresh strawberries. It’s a good old-fashioned recipe that makes it the ultimate treat for warm spring days or hot summer nights.

Strawberry ice cream is one of those must-have flavors, kind of like vanilla. I mean, who doesn’t love it—especially the kids, right? 😄

It’s strawberry season here in Spain, so I’ve been making loads of ice cream lately with these sweet, juicy berries. Gotta take advantage while they’re fresh!

For this one, I went with a Philadelphia-style base, which means no eggs and no cooking—super simple and quick.

It’s honestly such an easy treat to whip up for the family, and it always hits the spot. I love serving it in a waffle cone or a cute little bowl, maybe with a few extra fresh strawberry slices on top. A drizzle of chocolate sauce or a sprinkle of crushed meringue never hurts either!

Can’t wait for you to try it—hope it becomes a favorite in your home too! 🍓🍦

Ingredients for Strawberry Ice Cream

It goes without saying that strawberries are the main ingredient in this ice cream. But not just any strawberries. You need good ripe strawberries!

When it comes to letting fresh fruit shine through all that rich butterfat and sugar in ice cream, you’ve got to bring out the big guns. For me that means skipping the grocery store and making a pilgrimage to the farmers market, where those tiny, jewel-like berries cost a bit more—but smell like summer dreams.

Strawberry ice cream is a once-a-year kind of magic, best made when the fruit is at its peak or when you’ve got a stash of perfect berries frozen at their prime. Anything less—those bland, sometimes watery supermarket stand-ins—may not cut it. Even the greatest ice cream maker can’t coax flavor out of fruit that never had any to begin with.

And to be honest – this basically goes for any fruit ice cream. If you want that intense fruit flavor to shine, you need to pick ripe fruits.

The rest if the ingredients are: heavy cream, whole milk, salt and vanilla extract.

Making this Strawberry Ice Cream

Start by cleaning those strawberries. Hull them by cutting around the leaves and removing the hard white core at the top of the berries.

Then slice them into small pieces and put them in a bowl or directly in your blender. Add the sugar and stir the berries a bit so they are all covered with sugar.

Now let them sit for 30 min. The sugar will draw out the natural juices in the berries, make them sweeter, and intensify their flavor.

Blend the strawberries and sugar. Let the blender run on medium to high speed until everything is well mixed and all the small seeds are crushed.

Pour the heavy cream, whole milk, salt, and vanilla extract into a bowl. Give it a quick stir, and then add the blended strawberries.

Gently combine everything until you have a nice pink-ish mixture.

Chill the mixture in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, and then churn it in your ice cream maker.

If you’d like to ensure an extra smooth texture, you can pour your mixture through a sieve before churning. This will help strain out any seeds that the blender might have missed.