Strawberry-Lemon Verbena Ice Cream {Naptime Everyday}

What’s Going on Today: Early 5:30am wake-up call! Farmer’s market, laundry, camp!

Tonight’s Menu: Grilled Lemon Rosemary Chicken, Couscous Salad, Strawberry-Lemon Verbena Ice Cream

Naptime Goals: Make ice-cream base to all the herbs to steep!

This kid is killing me with the 5:30am wake-ups. I swear, I am this close to lining her windows with black electrical tape and turning her bedroom into a cave. The reason she keeps waking me up, she says, is because the sun is already up. (I don’t miss winter weather one bit, but I do miss the 7:15am sunrises!) One of our favorite early summer activities in strawberry picking. Being this tired means that it feels like 1pm, not 10am, when we go to the fields. Naptime feels like dinner hour, and I usually loose track of time completely by late afternoon. Since it felt like dinnertime when I was working on the strawberries last week it should come as no surprise that I was craving ice cream. My body was sure I’d already eaten dinner (it was, in fact, lunch) and was in the mood for something cool and sweet.

Instead of making a complicated egg custard based ice cream, I decided to make some strawberry ice-cream Philadelphia-style (i.e., no eggs). I also wanted to give it a twist by steeping the milk with lemon verbena leaves to give it a unique herbal twist. During naptime I warmed the milk and sugar and added the verbena leaves to the pot. With the heat off, the leaves steeped for an hour or so. Then, I popped it in the fridge to chill for the rest of the afternoon.

Right before dinner I poured the cream mixture into the ice cream maker, straining out the leaves as it went in. I also added several freshly sliced strawberries and turned on the machine to let it churn. Since I like to eat the ice cream on the softer side I tried a few quick spoonfuls and instantly fell in love. The creamy vanilla base had a subtle lemony herb flavor. The sliced strawberries were distributed evenly throughout the mixture, their delicious sweet berry flavor present in each bite. My daughter agreed that it was good, but prefers my classic recipe for her favorite mint chocolate chip. I promised I’d make her a fresh batch if she stayed in bed until 6:30am the next morning.