Lemon ice cream

Although the weather has got colder the ice cream making has not stopped – we love this lemon ice cream because its tasty and fresh and as a bonus pretty simple to make.

It uses a tin of low fat condensed milk (until recently I never thought you could use this for ice cream), half a tub of elmlea double cream (144ml), the juice of 4 lemons and the grated zest of 2 lemons.

Give all ingredients a quick whisk and pour into the ice cream machine for 30 mins, serve whenever you’re ready.

Ice Cream Loving

Although its now Autumn (and some days feels like winter) a couple of weeks ago I got myself and ice cream making machine. I love it!

It took a few unsuccessful attempts, but I’ve now mastered a classic vanilla ice cream recipe, and even got as far as making a strawberry ripple. My main learnings are:

– to make classic ice cream you must first make custard, let it cool, mix it with cream and then put through the ice cream machine (which freezes while churning)
– the ice bucket part of the machine must be properly frozen before you attempt to use it, this takes at least half a day, not a couple of hours
– 30-45 minutes of churning creates the best texture

So here’s the recipe for vanilla ice cream, taken from the Andrew James recipe book I got with my machine.

1. Make custard:
– warm 300ml of milk with a split vanilla pod in (seeds scraped out) until just before it starts to boil. Take off the heat and cover for 20 minutes.
– whisk 3 egg yolks with 100g of caster sugar. Add the vanilla milk to the eggs and sugar, whisk well, then pour back into the pan and remove the vanilla pod.
– warm over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until the custard thickens, coating the back of a spoon.
– leave to cool completely.

2. To make ice cream
– whisk in a 284ml tub of double cream into the custard
– pour into your ice cream machine (turned on) and leave to churn for 30 minutes (it however long your machine needs)

Once done, transfer into a tub and put in the freezer until you want to serve. I found that freezing for an hour after churning helped the ice cream firm up.

To make strawberry ripple, while churning blend strawberries with a couple if tablespoons of caster sugar. Ripple through with a spoon once the ice cream is ready (if you pour it into the machine it will just mix in).

Berry meringues

These little meringues are taken out of Jamie Oliver’s 30 minute meals and a super easy to make, of you have ready made meringue nests like me.

Spoon 1 tbs of lemon curd onto the meringue nest and top with the berry mix and a mint leaf and you’re done!

The berry mix is made with strawberries and raspberries (although you could you any berries you like) mashed with a tablespoon of honey and 2 tbs Greek yoghurt.