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You guys! Baby mister Matt worked his last day at his big boy job yesterday to join me full time in the house making pies and watching weird political documentaries on Netflix and scrolling through Instagram and Snapchat forever and ever. The last few months I've watched him help build an amazing restaurant with an amazing team and I've been his cheerleader, rooting him on in my knee-high socks and my hair curled tightly into pigtails, but now he's decided to come join the never-growing-up club and to be honest yeah I'm a teeny tiny bit super excited about it.

We're already talking about the road trips we'll have time to take and the blog things we'll have time to blog about and all of the things we definitely won't be able to afford to buy and it's really really great. So we made ice cream about it? No, not really. We made ice cream about summer and the 4th of July, because that's a thing people eat when it's balls to the wall hot out and your sociopath of a meteorologist on the local NPR station tells you, "it's about to get very hot, New Orleans" when your car's digital temperature screen is already aglow with the numbers '98' and you just really want to know what exactly his definition of "about to get" and "very hot" could possibly be. That's what we made this ice cream for.

We've both got a soft spot for cheesecake so making it into an frozen creamy ice cream situation seemed like the appropriate thing to do. There's some graham cracker clusters going on, and cream cheese chunks, and juicy sticky blueberry preserves. The entire thing just really screams, "childhood pleasures before coming into adult hood and realizing there is suffering in the world." It's super comforting. Oh and bonus, it's mega simple and you don't need to turn your oven on for any of it, thank God.

But anyhow, this ice cream is pretty much what you should be eating on the fourth of July. Which, by the way, what are you doing for the holiday? I think we're just going to look for the nearest pool and/or drink special and call it a day, maybe wearing a pair of patriotically-short short-shorts. I wish you the same! Wherever you end up celebrating the anniversary of our own little version of the #Brexit, I hope it involves booze, or ice cream, or short-shorts, or a pool. Or, shit, all of those things. K, love you, recipe below!

Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

Prep time: 30 minutes // Inactive Prep time: 3+ hours // Churn time: 20 minutes

Makes About 2 Pints

2 (13.5 ish oz) cans of full fat coconut milk
1/2 cup agave nectar
2 tablespoons corn starch or potato starch
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 (12 - 15 oz) jar blueberry preserves
8 oz cream cheese, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
1 cup crushed graham crackers, divided into 3/4 cup and 1/4 cup (see notes)
3 tablespoons condensed milk
10 - 12 ice cream cones (optional)
1/2 cup white chocolate morsels (optional)
Ice cream maker required!

Make sure the bowl of your ice cream maker has been frozen for at least 12 hours before starting this recipe!
Shake coconut milk cans to prevent separation. Pour 1/2 cup of the coconut milk into a small bowl and set aside. In a medium sauce pan over medium-high heat, whisk together the agave nectar and coconut milk (less the 1/2 cup you've set aside) until the agave has dissolved - about two minutes. Add the corn or potato starch to the 1/2 cup of coconut milk you had set aside, and whisk until combined. Pour into the saucepan with the rest of the coconut milk and whisk to combine.
Over medium heat, cook the mixture until thickened, about 6 minutes. Stir often during this process, making sure the mixture doesn't ever come to a boil. Once it is thick enough to coat the back of your spoon, remove from the heat and pour into a heat-proof bowl. Fold in the chopped cream cheese, half of the blueberry preserves (reserving the other half for later), and the vanilla extract. Let sit in a medium bowl until cooled to room temperature. Once cooled, cover and place in the fridge to chill for at least three hours, up to overnight.
After it's been chilled the appropriate amount of time, prepare the graham cracker clusters by tossing the 3/4 cup graham crackers with the condensed milk until small chunks form and it resembles granola (see above photos). Set aside in freezer to let firm up while the ice cream churns.
Begin churning ice cream according to the manufacturer's instructions. Mine churned for about fifteen minutes before it was sturdy and frozen enough.
Stop churning and fold in the graham cracker chunks, fresh blueberries, and the remaining blueberry preserves. Place in freezer for about hour or so to firm up. Serve in white chocolate graham cracker cones, or in a bowl. This ice cream can be stored in the freezer in an airtight container for about to one month.
To make the white chocolate dipped cones, we used store-bought ice cream cones and dipped them into melted white chocolate*, rolled them in the reserved 1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs, and let them dry on a wire rack before filling with the ice cream.

Notes

If you are not making the cones dipped in graham cracker crumbles, you'll only need 3/4 cup crushed graham crackers for this recipe and none of the white chocolate morsels.
If you are making the cones, I'd recommend dipping them and letting them set after you've churned the ice cream and have it firming up in the freezer, so they'll be super fresh when you serve it all.
To make this recipe vegan, substitute vegan cream cheese for the regular cream cheese, and skip the graham cracker crumbles (condensed milk), and just fold in crushed graham crackers instead.
To melt the white chocolate, place the morsels in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on high for one minute. Give a good stir with a fork or whisk to smooth out the morsels and let cool slightly before dipping the cones.

Have a surplus of blueberries cause they were on sale and you couldn't help yourself? Us too.