This is a pure csamom creation.  I wanted to cook something with the lavender and thought it might nicely complement lemon ice cream.  However, I had production issues in the process (ie:  I didn’t pay attention to what I was doing), so it turned out differently from what I had hoped.  I’m not even going to call this a recipe yet, because I think it needs some fine tuning.

I started with a Honey Lavender Ice Cream recipe I found at Epicurious.com.  It had received good reviews, but some reviewers found the honey overwhelming.  I had a bottle of muscat canelli ( a sweet desert wine) that I used in place of the honey.

Supporting local winemakers too!

Following the recipe, I combined the heavy cream, half-and-half, 2/3 c wine, and 2 T. dried lavender blossoms.  This was supposed to steep for 30 minutes.

But I had other things going on and forgot about it.  The cream mixture steeped for far longer than 30 minutes.  After straining the lavender creams through a fine mesh strainer to remove the lavender blossoms, I continued following the recipe, beating the eggs, adding some warm cream to the eggs, then adding that back into the warming creams.

I do like custard based ice creams because I generally find them creamier and more satisfying.

After adding the eggs to the custard mixture, I also added 1/3 c. lemon zest, another 1/3 c of wine (the custard wasn’t sweet at all  before this) and 1/3 c. fresh lemon juice.  At this stage, I heat until the mixture coats the back of a spoon.  But I got distracted again, and the mixture was boiling when I came back to it.  😦

Never, ever giving up, I cooled this mixture overnight, and the next day strained it through the fine mesh strainer once more  and mixed in the ice cream maker.

 The kids did not care for it at all.  My daughter thought the lavender flavor was too strong (as Anne has mentioned in her ideas) and my son was sure this was not food.  I agree the lavender is too strong (probably because it steeped too long) and the texture is a little off (probably curdled a bit  because of the boiling).  But, the ice cream has a lovely yellow color and a tangy lemon curd-like flavor that my husband liked. This is very strong and something you would eat in small scoops.

I have more wine and lavender, and I will try this again.