Ice Cream Sundays - {toasted almond & candied cherry}

I've got a question for you: if you were planning a vacation right now, and you had to pick between a trip to the beach or a trip to a big city, which would you choose?  Because your answer may very well determine whether you'd like toasted almond and candied cherry ice cream or not.

If you chose city, you'd love it.

The recipe comes from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop - love, love, love that book!  There are a few extra components here than in your standard ice cream recipe, like perfectly toasted almonds and sweet candied cherries (I made this late last summer when cherries were abundant in our grocery store).  The ice cream is full of flavor, thanks to the almonds and almond extract and the cherries.  But those are the things that make this a very busy ice cream, and you've got to do a lot of work just chewing each bite.  And just to make the taste profile even more complex, I decided to pair them with the almond butterscotch cookie cups, which were delicious but made the ice cream even crazier, busier and in-a-taxi-at-rush-hour-ier.

I loved the ice cream, but I started daydreaming about just making an almond-only version, and skipping the cherries and cookie cups.  In fact, I would skip the toasted almonds too, and just flavor it with the almond extract and almond-infused milk.  It would be smooth and creamy but have that wonderful almond flavor.......

Perhaps I'm a beach girl.

-Cheryl