To celebrate the birth of my new daughter this past 
week I made ice cream for the rest of the family.  
But not just any old “vanilla” ice cream. I decided 
to make something a bit more exotic.  I’ve seen 
sensationalistic cooking shows where chefs try to 
distinguish themselves by making wildly 
non-traditional flavors like bacon ice cream, goat 
cheese ice cream, or corn ice cream.  I wasn’t going 
quite that far, but still wanted something a bit out 
of the ordinary.  

After checking the fridge and deep freeze, I found an 
unfinished bag of frozen Fragaria x ananassa chunks. 
This fruity plant is a member of the Angiosperms 
clade, of the order Rosales.  Perfect!  But to ensure 
the right degree of sweetness, I also dug out some 
granulated Saccharum officinarum extract.  

Once you have the ingredients assembled in the right 
proportions, and assuming you have an ice cream 
maker, making ice cream is dead simple.  In fact, an 
ice cream machine is one of the few specialty kitchen 
appliances that I regularly recommend to others.  Ice 
cream does not have to be an unhealthy snack, but 
you’ll never get the healthy type if you only buy it 
from the store.

The recipe I put together for this batch is as 
follows:

1 cup whole milk
2 cups Fragaria x ananassa (chopped)
3 teaspoons Saccharum officinarum extract 
(granulated)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 pinch of salt

Pour the mixture into the ice cream machine and let 
it churn until it achieves the desired frozen texture 
and thickness.

And there you have it.  Serves 5 or 6 kids, including 
adult kids.

I have nothing against vanilla ice cream, and in fact 
I eat it all the time.  But sometimes it is nice to 
have something a little different. And it is always 
nice knowing exactly what your ice cream is made of, 
unlike The Who-knows-what that goes into mass 
produced “frozen dairy dessert”.