Coconut mango ice cream topped with chopped pistachios.

Jessica Webster | AnnArbor.com

If you love ice cream like I love ice cream, you might have noticed that the variety of ice cream brands and flavors available in stores has exploded in the past year. You can get mango lassi ice cream or salted caramel ice cream or even chocolate ice cream with ancho chiles. But these gourmet ice creams often come at a very high price, with some fetching as much as $13 a pint.

I usually only buy ice cream when we're having friends over for an informal dinner. It's fun to drag out the exotic flavors, a few bowls and a pile of spoons and try them all together. It's also a lot easier than trying to juggle meal preparations and making a dessert while trying to remain a calm and charming hostess. But at $13 a pint, buying a few pints to share suddenly seems prohibitively expensive.

The obvious solution to my ice cream dilemma came to me while watching an episode of Top Chef Just Desserts: I should make my own ice cream! So I got a great ice cream maker for my birthday last month and have spent the last few weeks exploring the world of homemade frozen desserts.

I've learned a lot in the past few weeks. I've learned that you should always strain the raspberry seeds out, even if the recipe doesn't tell you to, and especially if you ever want children to eat it. I've learned that you should always chill your liquids before putting them in the ice cream maker (even if the recipe doesn't tell you to) or you will just end up with a sugary soup. And most importantly, I've learned that you shouldn't be afraid to experiment.

This coconut mango ice cream was one of the simplest ones I found. Since the recipe calls for coconut cream and I only had light coconut milk in my pantry, I replaced 2 of the cups of coconut milk with heavy cream when making this batch. It's delicious topped with chopped pistachios or some mango slices.

Coconut Mango Ice Cream, adapted from the website Thai Cooking With Jam

Ingredients
6 cups of coconut cream (you can use coconut milk if you can't find coconut cream)
2 cups of sugar
3 mangoes, cut into small pieces
a pinch of salt
3 tablespoons of lime juice

Instructions
Put everything in a pot, bring it to a boil and let simmer for a few minutes.

Blend in a blender or food processor (my immersion blender worked just fine). Keep some full pieces of mango so there are pieces in the ice cream too.

Chill the coconut milk mixture in the refrigerator overnight, or at least for a few hours.

Then just follow your ice cream maker directions. The ice cream will still be quite soft when you're done, so you will probably want to allow a couple if hours in the freezer to firm up before you serve it.

Makes 2 quarts.

Jessica Webster leads the Food & Drink section for the AnnArbor.com community team. You can reach her at jessicawebster@annarbor.com.