Yuzu Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream Recipe

My yuzu blueberry cheesecake ice cream recipe is essentially frozen cheesecake.

As usual with most of my hybrid desserts, this blueberry yuzu cheesecake ice cream recipe came about when I couldn't decide what to make: in this case, cheesecake, or ice cream.

In fact, it's basically a frozen cheesecake made with a thin cheesecake batter – a cooked custard made with cream cheese.

The key to this blueberry cheesecake ice cream is to swirl in the blueberry conserve as part of the last step instead of churning it with the base. This way you get whole, pretty streaks of blueberry throughout the yuzu cheesecake ice cream.

I like using a chunky blueberry conserve because it tends to have a little less sugar than jam, but both work well.

As for the yuzu, feel free to replace with lemon juice if you can't find yuzu juice – just expect a less fragrant result (after all, it'll be lemon cheesecake rather than yuzu cheesecake).

The real secret to making this cheesecake ice cream extra good? Using good-quality cream cheese. I treated myself to some fancy French stuff from Waitrose, and it made it super luxurious.

You can also watch me make this on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients for Ice Cream Base:

150ml double cream
150ml full fat milk
200g full fat cream cheese
3 egg yolks
1/3 tsp cornflour
50g caster sugar
30ml yuzu juice

Ingredients for Mix-In:

90g blueberry conserve or jam

Base or Topping (Optional):

All-butter tartlet cases or crushed biscuits

Method:

1. Heat the cream, milk and cream cheese in a saucepan over a medium heat, stirring occasionally until the cream cheese has melted and the mixture is steaming hot.

2. While the milk is heating, whisk the egg yolks, cornflour and caster sugar together in a separate large heatproof bowl.

3. Once the milk is steaming hot, pour it over your egg yolk mixture, stirring vigorously the whole time. Then pour the combined mixture through a sieve back into the saucepan to catch any bits of egg that may have solidified.

4. Stirring continuously over a medium heat until the mixture thickens a little (enough to coat the back of a spoon), then stir in the yuzu juice.

5. Take off the heat and leave to cool completely, stirring occasionally to prevent a milk skin from forming. You can speed this up by placing the bowl into a bigger bowl that has ice water in it.

6. Freeze the now-cooled mixture according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

7. Spoon half of the soft-set ice cream into a freezable container, and dot half your blueberry conserve around on top. Give it a quick swirl with a knife, follow with the rest of the ice cream and the rest of the conserve, and give it another swirl.

8. Cover and freeze for at least four hours or overnight before serving scooped on top of ready-made tartlet pastry cases, or with crushed biscuits on top (or both, another of your favourite toppings, or nothing at all).

Enjoy, and have fun.