Strawberry picking in Perth and a tasty treat

Strawberries and Cream Ice Creams

What’s your favourite spring/summer fruit?

For me it’s Mangoes, hands down. Coming in a close second would be strawberries. My two little girls happen to love the latter equally – and as our efforts at growing them at home never seem to turn out (why is that? Don’t worry, I’m trying again this year!), there’s only one thing to do when springtime arrives in Perth.

Go and pick strawberries from a strawberry farm of course!

So one sunny Saturday we headed out to Bullsbrook for a strawberry picking adventure. We were lucky enough to meet some friends there, so our four girls could enjoy the strawberry picking (well in all honesty – strawberry eating for them. Mostly eating, we did the picking) together.

It was a nice way to spend some time outdoors, with the added bonus of coming home with a massive haul of strawberries. Throw in a nice lunch at a brewery or winery on the way home and you can’t complain, right?

Do I have any tips if you decide to take your family? I sure do:

  • Go early – it gets very busy (and hot!)
  • Don’t worry about taking a pram, you wont be able to take it very far
  • Take a small bag with you, with some water and a snack (it’s a long way back to the car!)
  • There is a portaloo near the entrance – so be sure to use it sooner, rather than later in your visit! We ended up quite far away from the entrance to get the best strawberries.
  • Unless you are SUPER keen – just get one tray per family. It took us over an hour to fill our tray up. If you have older kids who will actually help – then maybe go for two! A tray is $10.
  • The season (in Perth, WA) runs until late November/December

Now onto my recipe – obviously this came about after our strawberry picking adventure, as I had copious amounts of strawberries to use up! The girls love making ice creams at home as they can help and naturally they also taste pretty yummy.

The only issue we have is waiting for them to be ready!

Sugar Free Strawberries and Cream Ice Creams

Total time: 15 minutes (excluding freezing time)

Ingredients

  • 400g coconut cream (make sure it is 100% coconut, with no preservatives)
  • 200g to 300g strawberries (300g is approximately 15 to 16 strawberries) or any kind of frozen berries
  • 20g honey or 40g rice malt syrup (rice malt syrup for fructose free, if you use honey, make sure it is a good quality, raw honey)
  • Splash of vanilla extract (again good quality, preservative free) or vanilla powder
  • 20g desiccated coconut (optional)

How to:

  1. Place all ingredients in the Thermomix bowl. Mix spd 5, 15 seconds. This will give you nice texture to the ice-creams, but if you (ok your kids!) prefer a smoother texture, keep going.
  2. Pour into ice cream moulds and pop in the freezer.
  3. And that’s it!

Notes:

  • As we don’t eat a lot of sugar, we can eat foods that aren’t super sweet – if starting out on the whole low sugar thing or switching from packet foods then please add more sweetener initially and cut down. If you use more strawberries, then naturally this increases the sweetness.
  • A handful of frozen mixed berries will also add to the sweetness (and make the colour richer!)
  • If I use honey in cooking, I use less then rice malt syrup as I find it very sweet – hence the variation in the recipe.
  • You could use any fruit you wish in place of the strawberries – blueberries or mango (or together!) would work well

I have made similar “ice creams” before using coconut water and cut up fruit, so that’s also a quick and easy option.

About the Author

Kristy Morton runs a great blog called Loulou Zoo where she blogs about parenthood to her 2 gorgeous girls, nutritious wholefoods and how to “find your happy”.

Need some gumboots for your little strawberry-picker to wear on their next picking adventure? See our range of kids gumboots!