This strawberry ice cream calls for 4 tablespoons of alcohol to macerate with strawberries and sugar. I don’t feel like having a discussion with CPS. Do I need to replace it? Or just leave it out?
https://www.seriouseats.com/best-strawberry-ice-cream-recipe
by OcraftyOne
6 Comments
You can macerate fruit with just sugar. Just omit the alcohol, no worries.
The risk with leaving it out, is that the strawberries will become a bit icier; alcohol acts as an antifreeze. More sugar might help; possibly a little glycerine might help too, if it can get into the strawberry? but anyway, it’s not going to be inedible or anything if you just leave it out; the strawberry pieces might just be a bit firmer than otherwise. cutting the strawberries smaller might also help.
I’d be tempted to say just go for alcohol unless your kids are really young, but I know US people are really nervous around alcohol compared to Europeans, so this might be a culturally-inappropriate suggestion.
While you’re right in being concerned about alcohol and children, four tablespoons per quart of ice cream is an extremely small amount of alcohol overall. The alcohol is left just in the strawberries I suppose which concentrates it slightly, but ultimately it shouldn’t be much concern at that quantity.
If you are exercising your freedoms and are still reasonably concerned, then /u/Bradypus_Rex has the right idea with cutting berries smaller I think.
It looks like very little of the alcohol makes its way in to the final product, since you strain off the liquid before adding to the ice cream base. That said, if you’re still worried about the amount of alcohol you could probably leave out the macerated strawberries altogether since they’re just mix-ins. It’s likely the kids wouldn’t enjoy the flavor of alcoholic strawberries anyway.
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I wouldn’t be concerned about it. Quantity too small. Dilution too great to be of any concern.
I think in Italy children used to get lessons at school on how to properly drink wine starting at age 6.