Summer + icecream go hand in hand, don’t they?

As beautifully as salted butter on hot toast, and basil with mozzarella and tomatoes, and chocolate with strawberries, and can you tell I’m writing this whilst anxiously waiting for dinner to be ready?

We’ve had an icecream maker lingering in the loft for, oh, pretty much the whole time we’ve lived here. It has made several trips down from the loft, mind you. Over the past few years I’ve brought it down and put it in the front bedroom on several occasions, firm in the decision that I’d finally get round to making icecream during the upcoming weekend. Then it’d get tucked into the corner of the room to gather dust for a little while, then moved out of sight into the front bedroom wardrobe, before finally being lugged back up into the loft. But no more! I finally, finally took that underworked icecream machine on its maiden voyage, and you know what? The results were pretty fantastic!

The process is a slow one, but pleasingly so. ‘All good things…’, and all that? Strawberries were macerated with sugar, then blended to a sweet puree. Cream heated with milk and vanilla, poured over egg yolks and sugar, before being warmed through and stirred constantly until a thick, sweet custard formed. Then, after combining the two (custard with strawberry puree), came the churning.

It did take a while (tasting every three minutes or so is imperative, don’t you know?) but after 15 minutes or so of whirring away, the bowl was left full of the creamiest, most satisfyingly fresh strawberry icecream I’ve ever tasted.

Cancel all my weekend plans this summer- I’ll be busy in the kitchen.

p.s. The recipe I used is Nigella’s, amended only by adding a sieving of the custard after it’d finished cooking (to ensure smoothness), and by reserving a quarter of the chopped strawberries to add to the icecream once it was churned.

{Past seasonal ‘To Dos’}
Try this :: gallery hopping.
Try this :: practise a skill.
Try this :: festive baking.
Try this :: get lost in the countryside.
Try this :: have a hot chocolate picnic.