Today is the last day of August, the last day of National Peach Month, and the last day—or rather, weekend—we’ll have to make peach ice cream.

We’ve been meaning to it make all summer.

Growing up, peach was our favorite ice cream flavor. Available seasonally at Howard Johnson’s, we indulged as often as we could get someone to drive us there.

(When summer ended, we switched to Howard Johnson’s pistachio ice cream.)

Peach is one of those flavors that have fallen off the flavor board, along with butter brickle, maple walnut, mocha and tutti frutti.

They’ve been replaced by au courant flavors: cheesecake, chocolate chip cookie dough, cookies and cream, ginger, green tea, and a host of fringe flavors from bacon to charcoal.

O.K.: Time marches on, and with it, consumer tastes. But we still miss peach ice cream, more than any other food from our past.

Artisan ice cream companies that make peach as a summer specialty are located nowhere near us.

And we just haven’t been able to grapple with the $79.95 to get six pints shipped overnight from Graeter’s.

(It’s not the money; it’s the challenge of being alone with six pints of peach ice cream.)

So, plan B: Make our own peach ice cream.
 
PEACH ICE CREAM RECIPES

Here are three recipes we’ve used in the past.

For variation, we’ve added peach schnapps to the classic recipe—a nice occasional touch. We add it straight, or marinate diced peaches in it before adding to the mix.

We’ve also made a variation with chopped fresh raspberries.

One advisory about including chunks of peach: It looks exciting, but the peaches freeze much harder than the ice cream. So you don’t have to sink your teeth into a rock-hard chunk of peach, dice them as small as you can.

 
Plus:

You can make peach ice cream year-round with frozen peaches, but it’s simply heavenly made with fresh summer peaches (photo courtesy Bourbon And Honey).

Organic California peaches, straight from the tree (photo courtesy Frog Hollow Farm).