I love Saturday mornings at the farmer’s market. Despite the lack of parking and the oppressive Florida sun, my perfect weekend begins with a long walk, a giant iced coffee, and smushing my way through crowds of people to find perfectly imperfect produce. About two months ago, Martin was traveling for work and I spent one of these luxurious mornings alone, strolling through the tents at my favorite market. I was there just to see what interesting finds I would stumble upon and to take inventory of the fruits and herbs beginning to come into season, only to discover that the sweetest season of the year had arrived—Florida strawberry season. Strawberries start to come into season a little earlier in Florida, and all of the produce stalls were filled with fragrant, bright red berries. I think only half of my haul made it home as I couldn’t keep myself from snacking on them in the car. My little recipe development brain was racing with all of the possibilities.

I spent the next few days popping the little red berries in my mouth while sketching out a few different recipe plans for them. I didn’t want to waste any part of these precious little ones, so I began keeping the sliced off tops (that part with a little bit of white and the grassy green hat) in a deli container in my fridge. I didn’t know what exactly I was saving them for, but after a day or two, I decided that a little strawberry top ice cream was calling my name.

Ice cream is the perfect base to for incorporating flavor. Dairy has a good amount of fat content, which means it absorbs flavor easily without the addition of lots of extra sugar. For this ice cream base, I cold-steeped the strawberry tops in cream overnight which imparted a subtle strawberry flavor, not quite as strong as a traditional highlighter pink strawberry ice cream. I swirled this strawberry ice cream with a black pepper caramel, which added a little bit of depth and a hint of spice.

Due to the lack of space in my tiny, baby kitchen, I unfortunately do not have an ice cream maker, so this is a no-churn, no fancy equipment needed ice cream base. Many no-churn ice cream recipes rely on sweetened condensed milk and I really didn’t want all of that extra sweetness in this one, so we cut that right out. This recipe uses a traditional creme anglaise base that is chilled really well and then whipped and frozen. (This also means that if you are one of those lucky ducks that have your own ice cream maker, you can use this recipe and just follow the instructions of your machine after the anglaise is chilled.)