Ice cream

I've been meaning to write about ice cream for a while. If you hunt in the supermarket you can find ice cream without egg or nuts, but there's not that much choice. With home made ice cream you have lots of choice. However if you plan on making it for the small person in your life, maybe consider acquiring an ice cream maker. I'm a ludite about many things, but I love my ice cream maker. It's just a basic cheap model (the sort that has an electric paddle and an inner "cooling disk" that you freeze before making your ice cream). One can make ice cream without a machine, but it's a lot more time and labour intensive and I don't think I'd do it with a toddler in the house.

The basic recipe which I've adapted from my ice cream maker's instruction manual is as follows:

300g fruit
125g castor sugar
1 tbs lemon juice
300ml full cream milk
150ml cream

Puree fruit. Whip cream. Mix ingredients. Pour into ice cream maker. Ready to consume in 45-55 minutes.

Fruits that I've tried successfully so far; fresh strawberries, stewed apricots (my favourite), stewed blood plums and fresh mango. Keep in mind the quality of the fruit will be reflected in the quality of the ice cream - I used mediocre strawberries once and the resulting ice cream was pretty ho-hum. You can play around with the amount of milk and cream if you want more or less creamy ice cream, just make sure it totals 450ml. And the lemon juice acts to accentuate the flavour, so you can use it with your discretion (I didn't think the blood plums needed it). And if you halve the recipe its ready in 20 minutes!


I did make a discovery a few months ago which I'll record here before I forget; seville orange ice cream. It was awesome. Its a Nigella Lawson recipe, I've already forgotten from which book. If it is July or August look around for seville oranges. I found mine in Melbourne at Victoria Market.

Seville Orange Ice Cream

3 seville oranges
175g icing sugar
584ml double cream

Squeeze the juice of the oranges (Nigella includes the zest but I don't like anything marring the texture of this one). Whip cream until it holds soft peaks. Mix all ingredients together and pour into ice cream maker.

The picture above is an experiment using this recipe with blood oranges. It was ok, but not as amazing as the seville orange original.