Vanilla Ice Cream with Roasted Cherry Swirl

Happy Fourth of July Internet friends! 

For my international friends out there, I hope you have an enjoyable Thursday.  For my American friends in the Internet ether, Happy Independence day! 

I hope that your day is filled with sunshine, cookouts, ice cream and warm weather.  I love living in the tri-state area this time of year because we can celebrate the holiday all week long!  There have been fireworks dotting the skyline since Saturday as the hundreds of townships in the area celebrate with local events.  Boyfriend and I headed to the Montclair fireworks last night and have big plans to view the fireworks of New York City, western Long Island and eastern New Jersey from high up in the hills of Upper Montclair tonight.

To celebrate Independence day this year, I decided to put my OXO fruit tools to use and make some cherry swirled vanilla ice cream.  A few weeks ago I received a package from OXO (via the OXO blogger outreach program) filled with tools to help us enjoy the summer fruit bounty.  The box included a pineapple corer, mango pitter, strawberry huller, fruit scoopers and this cherry pitter! 

Using the cherry pitter cut my prep time down significantly and my cherry sauce was in the oven in no time.  Cherries are delicious all on their own, but roast them in the oven with a little sugar, you've got a winner.  Rather than just topping the ice cream with the roasted cherry sauce, I decided to swirl it right into the just churned ice cream.  Super delicious, perfectly refreshing for the fourth of July!

Disclaimer - I received the OXO fruit tools as a part of the blogger outreach program.  All opinions about the tools are my own and I have not been compensated for this post.

Vanilla Ice Cream

From Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home

2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 1/2 ounces cream cheese
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 Madagascar vanilla bean, split in half and seeds scraped out.  Keep both seeds and pod.

Whisk together 2 tablespoons milk with the cornstarch and set next to the stove.  In a large bowl, stir together cream cheese and salt.  Set large bowl near the stove.

Combine remaining milk, heavy cream, sugar, corn syrup vanilla bean and seeds in a 4-quart pot.  Whisk the mixture and bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat.  Let boil for 4 minutes.  Remove from heat and whisk in milk and cornstarch mixture.  Return to the heat and boil for another minute.  Remove from the heat and whisk into the large bowl containing the cream cheese.

Transfer ice cream mixture to a gallon sized zip top bag.  Fill a large bowl with ice and water.  Submerge zip top bag in the icy water and leave it there for 30 minutes, or until chilled.

Remove the zip top bag from the ice bath and remove the vanilla bean.  Turn your ice cream maker on and cut a corner from the bottom of the zip top bag, drain the contents into the spinning ice cream canister.  Freeze according to your machines instructions.  My ice cream took about 25 minutes to firm up.

Either eat ice cream as is, or layer with black cherry sauce. You'll have seven layers, beginning and ending with cherry sauce.  Do not swirl or mix the cherry sauce into the ice cream.  Cover with a lid and freeze until solid, about 4-6 hours, in the coolest part of your freezer.

Roasted Cherry Sauce

Adapted from Jeni's

3 cups pitted black cherries
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch

Preheat oven to 400 ºF.  Combine all three ingredients in an 8x8-inch pan.  Toss to coat the cherries in sugar.  Place in the oven and roast for 15 minutes.  Stir the cherries.  Roast for another 15 minutes.  Stir once again.  Roast for a final 10 minutes.

Remove cherries from the oven and let sit on the stove top to cool completely.  Transfer to a lidded container and place in the fridge to chill.