Almost a year ago, I visited Portland with my friend Christi. We wandered through stores, restaurants, and neighborhoods to our heart’s content.
On our last morning there, we tasted marionberry jam for the first time and both of our jaws dropped. I’ve found nothing that can compare to the sweetly tart marion blackberry. We came home with tote bags filled with jars of marionberry jam. On the flight home, we were dreaming up ways to use that jam. Toast, obviously. Biscuits, even better. Ice cream? That needed to happen ASAP. The most popular question I get is whether it’s possible to make ice cream without a machine. The answer is YES. You can make ice cream without a machine. Find the full directions here! However, life and a new cookbook and a million other things delayed my opportunity to play with that ice cream flavor. I carefully saved my last jar and this weekend I finally had the chance to try it. It most definitely did not disappoint. And I am thrilled to tell you that I lucked into more marionberry jam at my local grocery store this week too. If however, you are not able to find actual marionberry preserves or jam, this ice cream will be fabulous with any berry jam. I recommend using a jam that has a bit of tartness to it to balance the rich ice cream and brownie flavors. Blackberry or raspberry would be my alternate choices. Kitchen Tip: I use this ice cream compressor (and this ice cream maker) for homemade ice cream.
Brownie Berry Ice Cream Recipe
Want a peek into the rest of our Portland trip? Pine State Biscuits was a hands-down winner for breakfast with their chicken sandwich. (Pine State Biscuits was also the place where I was first introduced to Marionberry jam. Thank you for that!) Byways Cafe was a great find too, thanks to our Uber driver on Saturday morning. Classic American breakfast options in an old-school diner. We really enjoyed it and we loved the added bonus of not waiting in line for ages. Ruby Jewel and Salt & Straw were both ice cream hits as well. Powell’s City of Books won my heart before we walked through the door. Christi was a saint of a friend and humored me as I wandered through all the levels for a couple of hours. I found so many out of print and hard to find books there and managed to fill my entire little suitcase with books for the kids. (My clothing was haphazardly shoved into my tote bag for the flight home.) We spent an afternoon checking out the waterfalls near Portland and they were truly gorgeous. Latourell Falls and Horsetail Falls were beautiful and the crowds were not overwhelming. A long time item on my bucket list of places I’d love to see, Mulholland Falls was everything I imagined it would be, plus about 72,914 tourists. Still breathtaking, but elbow to elbow tourists takes a bit of the fun out of that particular site. We took a little while on Sunday to wander through the Japanese Garden and the International Rose Garden in Washington Park and they were just lovely. The gardens were incredibly peaceful and a bit of an oasis in the midst of a fairly nonstop weekend of seeing and eating all the things. I’m already looking forward to visiting Portland again. The city turned out to be a terrific destination for a weekend getaway.
