Recipe: Cheesecake

Another one inspired by Nigella Lawson. She does some great ice cream.

200 ml milk
300 ml cream
125g cream cheese
200g sugar
juice of half a lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
~60g digestive biscuits

Beat together the eggs, sugar, cream cheese and vanilla. Then heat up the milk and beat it into this mix. Pour it all back into the saucepan and stir until custard develops. Chill then freeze in the ice cream maker. Once it's finished, stir in the crumbled up biscuits and put it in the freezer for further solidification.

Remarks: Great! Could have used another hour or so in the freezer, but I was under time pressures due to rugby league season...If this wasn't a bit too soft I would rank it as my favorite ice cream yet...

Recipe: Biscotti e Crema

Commonly known as "Cookies and Cream", but I'm far too sophisticated for that!

400ml milk
300ml cream
3 eggs
100g sugar
1 vanilla pod
~125g chocolate cookies (I used arnotts 'chocolate ripple')

Of course you don't have to use a vanilla pod for this, you could just use vanilla essence, but where's the fun in that? Take your vanilla pod and make a slit along it lengthways. Scrape out all the seeds and put them in a saucepan with the milk. Make sure you get 'em all. Then throw the bean in the pot as well and heat the milk up until it almost boils. Let it steep for about 20 minutes, then take out the bean and pour the milk into the egg and sugar mixture. Mix it a bit and put it back into the saucepan. Heat and stir until you get your custard*, then let it cool, down mix in the cream and refrigerate. Then it goes into the machine and when it gets thick you put in the biscuits which you have crushed.

Remarks: Yes, yes yes. It is good. Possibly the finest textured ice cream I have ever produced. The only flaw was that the smaller biscuit crumbs dissolved as the ice cream was mixing and made it into a weak chocolate ice cream, rather than a vanilla base. Which was actually pretty good, but I prefer the contrast between the plain vanilla ice cream and the chocolate bits. So next time I would use larger chunks of biscuit and/or add them at a later stage. But this either way this is damn good. It's firmly nestled in my top 5. Rock 'n' Roll!

* The custard used in making ice cream is often called "Creme Anglaise', which is a FRENCH term meaning "ENGLISH Cream". Which seems pretty stupid to me.

Tribute Album

Well, with Ice Cream Sunday fast approaching it's 6 month anniversary, I figure the time is right to release a compilation album dedicated to everyone's favorite sunday afternoon activity!

(And no, I'm not going to actually do it, It's just another elaborate fantasy dreamed up to amuse myself during a slow work day.)

Tentatively entitled "Chill Out '06 - A musical tribute to Ice Cream Sunday", the track listing to date is:

01. Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2
02. White Pepper Ice Cream - Cibo Matto
03. Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice
04. Greensleeves - ??? (err, you know that song the Mr Whippy van plays as it drives around?)

Hmm, any more suggestions?

Recipe: Peach

OK, so my dear mother - always supportive of her son's wacky schemes - sent me a bunch of ice cream recipes photocopied from her Nigella Lawson cookbook. Thanks Mum! Anyway, one of them forms the basis of this weeks flavour...

• ~6 ripe yellow peaches (Nigella recommends 10 peaches, but she's way off here. Even 6 is probably too many. Perhaps she is used to using tiny, tasteless British peaches?)
• 300ml milk
• 300ml cream
• 4 egg yolks
• Juice of 1 lime
• 6 tbsp sugar

Cut the peaches in half and put them face up on a baking tray. Sprinkle over half the sugar, and then squeeze over the lime juice. Put that in a 210 C oven for 20-30 minutes or so till the peaches go soft. This will enhance the flavour of the peaches, apparently.

Let 'em cool off a bit, then peel off the skins as best you can. Put them in a blender or food processor and puree them. Let 'em cool down some more

Meanwhile, make your custard with the milk and egg yolks and the rest of the sugar. Once it and the peaches have both cooled off, mix them together with the cream and refrigerate the whole thing for a bit longer. Then fill the machine and away you go to a happy land of peach-filled fantasies.

Oh, and cos I had so many peaches left over I chopped them up (after roasting) and mixed them into the ice cream.

Remarks: Well look, this tastes pretty good, but once again the stuff was too soft. There was a bit more volume than usual, thanks to the over-estimation of peaches, which could have something to do with it. But this, coupled with last weeks debacle makes me a little uneasy. Perhaps my faithful Krups Ice Cream Maker is starting to fail??