Prune and brandy ice cream

So I made this rather brilliant ice cream last month. And even though the sunny weather that was ideal for its consumption seems to have disappeared, I thought it was still worth writing about. The recipe is from the also rather brilliant Food Stories blog, and I followed it to the letter apart from the substitution of cognac for brandy. This was the first time I've made a proper custard-based ice cream, but it was surprisingly simple. I also lack an ice cream maker so had to hand churn at regular intervals. This was probably not ideal, as the texture of the ice cream was not quite as smooth as I'd hoped for (though still acceptable) and the prunes got a bit mushed. So although the end product was still delicious, I am beginning to think that it might be worth investing in a proper ice cream maker now.

Anyway, even sans ice cream maker I will definitely be making this again and am adding it to my list of why prunes are great!

Simple mint chocolate chip ice cream from Kavey Eats

I spotted this recipe for a quick and easy triple mint choc chip ice cream over on Kavey's ace blog a few weeks ago. I think I was still wearing my big coat, gloves, and boots into work then, so filed it away for when the sun eventually emerged. Which thankfully it has now done- huzzah- ice cream time!

Anyway, I don't think I've ever made a custard from scratch, and though I can't imagine it would be that difficult, what immediately appealed about Kavey's recipe is that it uses a ready-made custard for the ice cream base. I thought this was a great idea, so there was no faffing around with double boilers and spare egg whites for me! Apart from the custard, there are only three other ingredients in this ice cream- mint leaves, mint chocolate and mint liqueur (or peppermint extract). I made some minor changes to Kavey's original recipe, so here's my version.

Recipe (enough for about 6 portions depending on greed):

500ml ready-made 'premium' custard
1-2 tblsp chocolate mint leaves, chopped
100g bar Green and Black's dark mint chocolate, chopped into small chunks
0.5 tsp peppermint extract

Simply combine all of the above ingredients, and either put into an ice cream maker or (as I don't have one) put into a container, put in the freezer, and mix thoroughly every 45 minutes or so for 5-6 hours to minimise ice crystals forming.

This was the perfect ice cream for a hot sunny day- not too sweet, fresh from the mint, and with big chunks of dark chocolate. And it was so genuinely simple to assemble, I will definitely be making this again.

 And in a rather meta development, I'm also submitting this post as an entry into Kavey's Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream May challenge, which has chocolate as its theme.

Rhubarb crumble ice cream

There are many reasons why the interweb is brilliant, and this is one of them. I would not have come across this recipe for rhubarb crumble ice cream if it wasn't for the Food Stories blog. Though it's a Delia creation it was seeing this ice cream appear on the blogosphere that prompted me to try it, and with a few handy hints via Twitter (thanks to aforkfulofspaghetti) I can declare it a huge success!

Click through using the links above for the full recipe but the beauty of this ice cream is that it is so simple. Cook rhubarb, mix with cream, add in crumble, make cold=done. As Helen Food Stories mentions I think a reduction in sugar when cooking the rhubarb is beneficial. And I should probably have reduced it even more than I did to really heighten the contrast between sweet crumble, cold cream and sharp rhubarb.

I don't have an ice cream maker so once the cooked rhubarb had cooled and been mixed with the cream, I was committed to a schedule of visits to the freezer and churning. Churning it every hour or so worked really well, though did get increasingly difficult as the ice cream become more frozen and harder to mix. Due to circumstances I churned over the course of about six hours and then left the ice cream overnight in the freezer. The next morning a full upper body work-out was required to undertake the final churn and mixing in the crumble. It then went back in the freezer for a couple of hours and was put in the fridge around half an hour before we ate it. It was definitely worth all the effort though, as the final product was delicious and ice crystal free!

Ideally serve on hot summer's day while wondering if it is worth investing in a proper ice cream maker....