Homemade Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream

This homemade roasted strawberry ice cream is bursting with sweet strawberry flavor and is so easy to make with only 6 simple ingredients! It’s a must-have dessert this summer! (gluten-free, vegetarian)

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM! I can’t help but think of my grandpa every time I eat ice cream. He had so many little sayings and songs that he would regularly recite for the family to hear at just the right moment, but this one might have been my favorite as a kid, because it always meant there was ice cream involved.

When I was growing up, my family would spend our weekends at the lake, water skiing, fishing, baking, and begrudgingly raking leaves to burn in the burn pile. And if we were lucky, my mom would pull out the old ice cream maker and make homemade ice cream. It used ice and rock salt and was quite a pain, but the homemade ice cream was worth it.

All of the kids would anxiously wait while the sweet, creamy base churned away, while my dad and grandpa would fell asleep in the living room to an old John Wayne movie. Finally after what seemed like hours of churning and a mess of melted ice and rock salt all over the front porch, the glorious homemade ice cream would be ready for us to scarf down before it melted into ice cream soup.

This homemade roasted strawberry ice cream is a little reminder of my childhood days at the lake and my mom’s homemade ice cream. It’s creamy and rich, and has the perfect soft-serve consistency right out of the ice cream maker. It’s like heaven.

The roasted strawberries are so fragrant and sweet, and give so much strawberry flavor to the creamy vanilla bean base. The extra step of roasting is absolutely worth the amazing flavor, so don’t skip it! I used 2% milk in this recipe and it turned out great for me, but feel free to use whole milk if you’d like. I highly recommend the vanilla bean if you have it, but vanilla extract will work in a pinch.

Though if you’ve ever made ice cream, you know that it’s never made in a pinch. You’ve got to freeze the bowl of the maker, chill the base before churning, and if you want a more solid ice cream, freeze it even longer before enjoying it. But it’s totally worth all of those steps for such an amazing dessert!

Making ice cream at home has become a little bit easier and less daunting since my grandma gave me this ice cream maker for Christmas last year. It doesn’t require any ice or rock salt, and it’s less bulky than your old fashioned ice cream makers. I’ve been loving it for making homemade ice cream. I keep the bowl in the freezer outside just in case the urge for ice cream strikes – which is often in our house!

Even if you don’t have a compact ice cream maker like this one, you have to make this roasted strawberry ice cream! It’s the perfect taste of summer in a delicious dessert, and worth every bit of effort you put into it. If grandpa were still here, he would love this ice cream. And he would recite, I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!, right before digging in!