We’ve been experiencing an unexpected heat wave lately in Montana. It’s been well into the nineties almost every single day, and to be honest, we’re just not used to that kind of heat here!
I feel pretty lucky since we have a nice cool basement to sleep in whenever the upstairs is unbearable. And we’ve been grilling pretty much everything, as well as making ice cream and nice cream on the double.
This peach nice cream has been on repeat lately. It’s so refreshing and pretty much health food. To be technical, it’s actually a sorbet because it’s made almost entirely from fruit. But nice cream is a relatively new term that describes a dairy free frozen treat made mostly from fruit, and I love the way it sounds.
The peachy flavor of this nice cream is enhanced with a touch of cinnamon and lemon juice to brighten the flavors. I also like to add a little maple syrup because we rarely get 100% ripe peaches here. If your peaches are bursting with sweetness, you may not need it at all.
And speaking of peaches, this recipe relies completely on the flavor of your fruit. So they need to be as flavorful as possible, or the nice cream will be bland.
I like to use my food processor for fruit based nice creams. This is mostly because my Vitamix is out of warranty now, and I’m scared to do anything to hurt it. I know lots of people make nice cream in their high powered blender and don’t have any problems. I’m just being a baby and overly cautious.
Either way you go, you’ll have super smooth nice cream, although with the food processor, you need to stop and break up the chunks of fruit a few times during the processing.
After it’s done, it will be the texture of soft serve. You can serve it right away, or place it in a container, and freeze for 3-4 more hours. For the best texture, stir the nice cream every 30 minutes or so.
We’re peach fanatics around here, so we like to top our peach nice cream with more peaches. You can also make my Fresh Peach Topping for the ultimate peach on peach combination!
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5 Minute Soft Serve Peach Nice Cream
- Total Time: 5 mins
- Yield: about 3 cups 1x
Ingredients
- 4 cups diced peaches, frozen
- 2 Tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1/2 Teaspoon Vietnamese cinnamon
- 2–3 Tablespoons maple syrup, optional to taste
Instructions
- Place all the ingredients into a food processor or high powered blender.
- For the food processor, process until the fruit starts to stick into clumps. Then stop to break up the fruit chunks and repeat this process until the nice cream is completely smooth, about 3-4 minutes.
- For a blender, start at low speed and use the tamper to keep the mixture moving increasing the speed as you go, and adding water only if necessary. When I have made nice cream in my blender, I start on low and end at about speed 5-6 on a Vitamix.
- Serve the nice cream immediately, or you can freeze it for 3-4 hours for a firmer texture.To keep the smoothest texture, stir the nice cream every 30 minutes to prevent it from forming too big of ice crystals as it freezes, which is what will make it icy.
- Prep Time: 5 mins
Do you leave the skin on the peaches ?
I do leave the skin on my peaches, the food processor completely grind it right up!
Hi Kari… can you put this in an ice cream maker?
You should be able to do that, I would blend all the ingredients until smooth, (with defrosted or fresh peaches) then add it to the machine and freeze like ice cream. Also depending on what kind of blender you have, if the blended peach mixture isn’t perfectly smooth, you can always pour it through a fine mesh sieve. I sure hope you enjoy it!
Hi Kari- I made this last for a group of 8 in my Vitamix. It was easy and excellent! The cinnamon made a big impression (and I added about 2 tbl of maple syrup which you couldn’t taste – just peachy and cinnamon- Yum). Some folks added coconut cream to the top of theirs and they LOVED it!
I’ll make this again!
So glad you enjoyed it! I’m freezing a bunch of peaches today, just so I can make this a few times over the next couple weeks!
Wondering if this would work with fresh/frozen papayas? I have a tree choc-full of them!
I think it would work based off their texture, although I’ve never tried it because papaya isn’t readily available for us. You might want to try adding a bit of freshly squeezed lime juice if you try the papaya!
I want to try this before summer is over, thanks for the idea! 🙂
★★★★★
I hope you do get a chance because it’s so delicious!
My belly will no doubt love this nice cream, thanks for sharing!
I think your tastebuds will thank you as well!