My favorite summer dessert is ice cream or sorbet. I purchased a Cuisinart Ice Cream maker a couple of years ago and it was one of my best appliance purchases. Just freeze the canister and you have ice cream in 30 minutes.

I also love the recipes in Jeni’s Splendid Homemade Ice Cream. I bought it back in 2011. I haven’t made that many of the different flavors but the base vanilla is the best.

I wanted a Vanilla base with cherries and chocolate chips. I used the idea of roasting the cherries with a little sugar from her Roasted Cherries and then layering with the vanilla chocolate chip. It was perfect.

Roasted Cherries

20-30 cherries, pitted and halved
1 1/2 TBS sugar
1 TBS bourbon or amaretto (optional)

Heat oven to 400 debrees. Combine cherries, sugar and bourbon in baking pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes until fruit is soft watching carefully so the sugar does not burn. Remove, cool and chill. You may want to cut into quarters or smaller pieces otherwise the cherry pieces will be large and potentially icy.

Vanilla Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
1 TBS + 1/4 tsp cornstarch
1 1/4 cup cream
2 TBS corn syrup or inverted sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
3 TBS cream cheese.
1 Tsp vanilla or 1/4 tsp almond extract

Set aside 2 TBS milk in small bowl. Combine with cornstarch – set aside.

Combine remaining milk, cream, sugar, cornsyrup and bring to boil over medium heat. Boil for about 1 minute. Stir in the cornstarch/milk slurry and bring back to a boil. Combine with cream cheese. Stir in flavoring. Cool and chill.

When the milk mixture is chilled, melt 2 oz dark chocolate and set aside. Churn ice cream according manufacture’s directions. Just before it has finished, drizzle melted chocolate into ice cream to create flakes.

Layer vanilla ice cream with the cherries. Freeze for at least 2 hours.

Enjoy!