Up until now, the ice cream I make at home is pretty much just that, frozen cream and milk. For me, this is easy to make and produces extremely satisfactory results, but it isn’t the softest to scoop once it’s been in the freezer for a week. Most of the world’s ice cream is based on a frozen custard, the idea is that the eggs help to keep it emulsified, so I’ve had an exploratory go myself.

I consulted with both Delia and Nigella and whilst they both agree on a basic custard recipe, it was Nigella who added the top tip of keeping the kitchen sink half full of cold water, ready to plunge your pan into it if you’re in the slightest danger of it splitting and turning into scrambled egg.

Whilst apricots and raspberries do go well together, this was more of an excuse to use a handful of fruit that had been sat around ripening for a while

Ingredients

Makes about 750ml

200ml double cream
400ml milk
3 free range egg yolks
110g sugar

4 ripe apricots
50g raspberries

Method

Start by making your custard.

Mix together the cream and milk, put it in a pan and start it warming up. You don’t want it to boil, but get close.
Whilst that’s heating, whisk together the egg yolks and 100g of the sugar until it gets visibly lighter.

Once the milk just starts to bubble, pour the hot milk over the egg and sugar mix and keep whisking.

Put the mixture back into a pan and gradually heat it up, whisking or stirring all the while. It’s safer to heat it gently, but I gave it the beans (small ring on electric hob, I wouldn’t dare do that on a gas ring) and didn’t stop whisking. After about 5 minutes of this treatment, I could just start to see little bits of colour changes within the mixture, so it was straight into the sink of cold water and in with the electric whisk. The proper way to judge when it’s done is look for a velvety smooth texture that just coats the back of a spoon, it won’t thicken properly until it cools down to room temperature. Next time, I’ll give it 7-8 minutes on a medium heat and still lots of whisking.

Custard is just coating the back of the spoon

With your custard safe, it’s time to prepare the fruit.

Finely dice the apricots and stir them through the custard.

Pour it into a jug or tub to chill and cover it with cling film to prevent a skin forming. A skin isn’t the end of the world with this mixture, but it’s a quick way of wasting a whole lot of vanilla seeds if you’ve added a vanilla pod. Leave it in the fridge until it’s cold.

Preparing a raspberry syrup to swirl through the ice cream is easy enough, put a handful of raspberries in a pan with a couple of spoons of sugar and a couple of spoons of water. Let it slowly cook until the fruit starts to collapse, then finish the job with the back of a spoon. Some people sieve out the seeds for a purer look. Chill the raspberry syrup.

Churn the ice cream in a machine for 15-20 minutes and transfer it into your tub. Finally, spoon in the raspberry syrup and give it a swirl with the spoon or a chopstick and freeze it for a couple of hours before serving.

Apricot and Raspberry Ice Cream

Another recipe I’m afraid, seems that’s all I’m good at making time for nowadays. However, this recipe is a nice combination of italian and british tradition, pretty much a crumble that’s upside down and can be made to look good for presentation.

Ingredients

Serves at least 6

Topping:
6 Apricots
25g butter
2 tablespoons apricot jam

Base:
100g plain flour
50g butter
50g sugar
50g Amaretti biscuits

You’ll need a tart or cake tin with a removable base

Method

Preheat an oven to 180C

Line the base of the cake tin with greaseproof or baking parchment

First make the base mixture by creaming together the butter and sugar, then rubbing through the flour to get a consistency of breadcrumbs. Use your fingers or a rolling pin or the bottom of a frying pan to reduce the Amaretti biscuits to small crumbs and stir them into the mixture.

Tightly pack the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin, trying to leave as few air gaps as possible.

Next slice your fruit, I used apricots because I think they go well with almonds, but bramley apples would also work well with a generous spoon of ground cinnamon. This is Italian inspired, so try to heap on the fruit generously rather than artfully arranging them.

To make it look better and hold together a bit, I used two glazes. The first was melting a spoon of butter in the microwave and brushing it all over the fruit (this is where you’d add the cinnamon if using apples), then I melted a couple of tablespoons of apricot jam in the microwave and brushed that all over the fruit too.

It’s now safe to leave in the fridge or freezer until you want to cook it.

Bake it in the oven for 40 minutes. The fruit will be done sooner but it’s nice to get a good crunchy base so that it holds together on the plate. I served it with a quinelle of creme fraiche.

Apricot and Amaretti

My latest evening course on dinner party cooking has been a great opportunity to focus on desserts, something I normally avoid eating, let alone preparing. This dish is my own recipe, with elements inspired from all over the place. The idea was a simple homage to the classic Mille Feuille (thousand leaves) that didn’t requires years of pastry training and tastes great with freshly picked strawberries. Sorry for the lack of quantities of the ingredients, I do almost all of my creating by feel. This can be made hours before serving and keeps well in the fridge, but only if you don’t tell anybody it’s in there.

Ingredients

makes 2, scales well up to ‘big’

quarter of a packet of shop bought puff pastry
half a punnet of fresh strawberries or raspberries
200ml double cream
quarter of a teaspoon of vanilla paste or extract
4 squares of Bournville
Icing sugar
a few mint leaves to garnish

Pastry Cutters or ring moulds
Small sieve or tea strainer
Something to pipe with
Something to crush with
Greaseproof parchment or silicone sheet
2 oven trays or baking sheets

Method

The first element to sort out is the Pastry. The idea is to have the lightness of puff pastry but with none of its expanding height.

Preheat your oven.

Roll out the puff pastry so it’s fairly thin, then place it on a sheet of something non stick on a baking tray. Use a tea strainer or small sieve to lightly sprinkle about a teaspoon of icing sugar onto the pastry, then cover it with another non stick sheet and press it down with the second baking tray.

Put it in the oven for half of the cooking time indicated on the packet’s instructions.

Whilst that’s baking, you can get on with making the fruit coolis. For soft fruit, this turns out to be easier than you’d think.

I took 4 strawberries and bashed hell out of them using my wood mortar and pestle, then passed them through my tea strainer with the help of the back of a spoon. Clean your sieve then use it to gently stir in a teaspoon of icing sugar to the fruit.

Set your coolis aside in the fridge for later

By now, the oven timer’s probably beeping, so take out the half cooked pastry and sieve over another teaspoon of icing sugar. Put the pastry back between its sheets of parchment and baking trays and give it the remaining 10 minutes in the oven.

Whilst that’s cooking, you can get on with the next element, the vanilla cream. Simply add a couple of drops of vanilla extract or paste to some double cream and give it the beans with an electric whisk until the cream can just hold its shape. You don’t want it to be so solid that you can stand a spoon in it, or you’ll never pipe it out.

Now prepare your fruit. The quantity will depend on the size of your fruit and moulds (i used a medium pastry cutter for my mould). I took about a dozen strawberries and cleaned, hulled and sliced them in half lengthwise.

Take out the pastry and let it cool to room temperature. Once that’s done you can cut out 4 pieces of pastry for the tops and bottom of the dish. Make sure the sugar crusted side is upwards.

Now for the fun part, assembling it without making a splodgy mess.

Leave the first pastry circle in the bottom of the mould and place it in the centre of a flat plate. Now stand up fruit around the outside edge, I think strawberries look better with the cut side outwards. You may need to cut one down so that the circle doesnt overlap. Put a couple more slices in the bottom.

Now, using a piping bag or a pair of teaspoons, fill up the mould with the vanilla cream and top it with another piece of pastry. If you’ve got more than one mould, then great, leave it on until the last minute so the cream can get hold of the fruit and pastry so it holds together.

Next, melt a few squares of Bournville choc in the microwave or bain marie and pipe very very small decorative lines on the plate. The idea here is to make an edge you can fill with coulis, so don’t leave any gaps. Ignore the thickness of my choc in the photos, I’m rubbish at piping melted choc.

Give it a few seconds to set, then carefully spoon some in some coolis. The fruit coolis should settle into any gaps after a few seconds, so don’t be tempted to overfill it, it doesn’t take much to spill over.

You can now put the desert in the fridge until it’s needed. The pastry’s sugar crust should help stop it going soggy for a few hours.

Just before serving, sieve another half teaspoon of icing sugar onto the top of the pastry. Then, holding down the top pastry lid, gently gently lift off the moulds.

Garnish with a few mint leaves under some more fruit and serve.