Its raining and gloomy and probably the last thing you are thinking about is making ice cream, but the Children are on Summer holidays and will need entertaining, so I think a movie day, cuddled up under duvets with homemade ice cream may be just what we need.
We are lucky to have a very productive fruit cage in our garden and blackcurrant’s are now in season, I recently posted a gorgeous blackcurrant meringue recipe and made a delicious puree, the colour was so vibrant and it tasted amazing, not wanting to waste any of our abundant harvest I also decided to make this stunning ice cream, its a great way of using them up and being able to store them for a while.
Now this is a very simple recipe, there is no complicated custard making, no need for an ice cream machine, which when I was searching for good ice cream recipes I found so many that required a machine and were so complicated to make, for example, yesterday I decided to try making a vanilla ice cream, it cost me a fortune in vanilla pods and it all went to waste when I scrambled the egg at the custard stage. I was so disappointed. I know that purists will insist that this is the only way to make decent ice cream and I am sure that they are right, I will have another go at the method, but for now I will be keeping it simple.
This recipe delivers rich, tasty and creamy ice cream, what more can you ask for. I served ours in yummy sugar cones, but it would make a stunning dessert served in brandy snap baskets, a little puree poured over the top and a sprig of mint for decoration, voila!!! A perfect light and simple dinner party Summer pud.
Buon appetito
400g blackcurrants
100ml apple juice
200g golden caster sugar
568ml double cream
397g tin sweetened condensed milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
Put the blackcurrants and the apple juice in a small pan, bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Add the sugar, heat gently until dissolved, then bring to the boil and simmer gently for 3-4 minutes to thicken the syrup a little. Cool, then scoop out 3 tbsp of the currants and keep to one side.
Purée the rest of the currants and the syrup with a hand blender and rub through a sieve to get rid of the pips.
Beat the double cream to soft peaks, then pour in the condensed milk and vanilla extract and whisk again to soft peaks. Pour the mixture into a freezer-proof box, and drizzle over half of the blackcurrant purée. With a rubber spatula or large spoon, stir the mixture once in a figure-of-eight, just to ripple the purée through.
Cover with a lid and freeze for at least 3 hours.
To serve, mix the rest of the purée with the saved blackcurrants. Scoop the ice cream into glasses and spoon over the purée. If you have made the blackcurrant meringues from my blog, these would be great crumbled up with the ice cream.
Comments (0)