Forever Summer (31 page)

Make a
custard
in the normal way: that’s to say heat the single cream, beat the sugar and yolks, add the one to the other and put back on the heat, stirring, until thickened. Pour into a bowl and let cool. When the custard’s completely cold, stir in the also-cold gooseberry and elderflower purée and then fold in the whipped cream. Freeze, observing all the usual
strictures
.

Serves 8.

BACI ICE CREAM

Baci are those chocolate hazelnut kisses that I can’t say are good, but are somehow compulsive, and you get this ice cream in every gelateria in Italy. Eat in cones, stuffed into
brioches
or simply in a bowl, with a sprinkling of chopped, toasted hazelnuts.

You can get the hazelnut syrup at any American coffee shop these days, and you do need it to get that intense, smoky, caramelly nuttiness.

Before you start, do read the
ice cream tips
.

4 large egg yolks

100g caster sugar

500ml double or whipping cream

100g dark chocolate, minimum 70% cocoa solids

25g best-quality cocoa powder

1 x 200g pot Nutella

2 teaspoons hazelnut syrup

Whisk the yolks and sugar in a bowl until thick and creamy; they should form pale ribbons when you lift the beaters or whisk. Bring the cream to the boil and add it to the beaten yolks, pouring slowly and beating all the while.

Melt the chocolate (I find this easiest to do in the microwave) then whisk this, followed by the cocoa, into the eggs and cream. Pour the chocolate-custard mixture into a pan and cook on a low to moderate heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until everything’s smooth and amalgamated and beginning to thicken. Turn into a bowl or wide jug and cool, whisking or stirring every now and again to stop a skin from forming.

When the mixture’s cool, whisk in the Nutella and the hazelnut syrup and then freeze in an ice-cream maker.

Serves 6–8.

DIME BAR ICE CREAM

I used to have a really bad Dime Bar habit, which I cured by becoming a Dime Bar pusher. Now I’m just an occasional user. Still, this stuff is dangerously addictive…

4 Dime Bars

600ml single cream

6 egg yolks

125g caster sugar

Break the Dime Bars into pieces and put into a food processor and blitz till finely ground, like glassy sand. Tip out on to a plate and put in the fridge.

Warm the single cream. Whisk the yolks and sugar, then pour, still whisking, the warmed cream over the egg mixture. Transfer to a saucepan and cook till a
velvety custard
. Cool then chill and, before pouring into the ice-cream machine, fold in the processer-pulverised Dime Bars.

Serves 8.

FROZEN CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES

Do not be alarmed: no rarefied work or chocolate tempering is called for here. You just melt and mix and mould.

I have to admit that the inspiration for this comes from a rather low-rent variant: some entirely industrially made, chocolate-flavoured, vermicelli-coated balls, which I came across in a beach bar in Ibiza once. I prefer them dusted with cocoa rather than rolled in chocolate-flavoured sugar bits, but I am not trying to fashion them into elegant morsels, hence the inclusion of Bailey’s.

Serve after dinner, with coffee, on hot summer evenings when a proper pudding feels like too much.

150g dark chocolate, minimum 70% cocoa solids

200ml double cream

4 tablespoons Bailey’s Irish Cream

5 tablespoons cocoa powder

Break up the chocolate into small pieces and melt it with 100ml of the double cream in a saucepan, very gently.

Pour into a bowl, add the Bailey’s and let the mixture cool. Then whisk the remaining 100ml double cream until soft peaks form, and fold it into the cooled chocolate mixture. Let it harden in the fridge for at least an hour or until you can shape it into balls.

Now do just that. It’s messy work but not hard: take small nuggets into your hands and roll them into little balls, then dust them with cocoa (by rolling them into some cocoa sieved out on to a plate) and sit them on a Swiss roll tin which you simply place in the deep freeze. It’s best not to make these in advance as their intense chocolatiness seems to fade after a couple of days in the freezer. And when you’re serving them, don’t take them out more than 10 minutes before you want to eat them: they need some of the raw chill taken off, but you don’t want them to soften into unfrozen gunge.

Makes approximately 30.

WHITE CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM WITH HOT BLACKBERRY SAUCE

The Ivy restaurant has a star-pudding on its menu which is a plateful of frozen berries with hot white chocolate sauce poured over them. It’s immodest to say it, I know, but I prefer my version: the iced part is the white chocolate; the hot sauce, a tart, beaded river of blackberries. Scoop the ice cream into knickerbocker glory glasses, if you’ve got them, and pour the molten bramble sauce over. Even if you think you don’t like white chocolate, you’ll like this. (And before you start, do read the basic
ice cream instructions
.)

for the white chocolate ice cream:

500ml milk

4 egg yolks

50g caster sugar

200g white chocolate

Warm the milk. Whisk the yolks with the sugar, then pour – still whisking – the warmed milk over the egg mixture. Pour into a saucepan and cook till a velvety custard. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave – or in a bowl over a pan of boiling water – for 3 or so minutes, then whisk into the cooked custard. Cool, then chill then freeze in the
ice-cream
machine as normal.

for the sauce:

1 punnet blackberries (approx. 150g)

4 scant tablespoons caster sugar

juice half a lemon

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon arrowroot, slaked in a little cold water

Put the berries, sugar, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar and 50ml water in a saucepan and bring to the boil, turn down heat and cook for a few minutes. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the arrowroot paste. Pour into a wide-mouthed jug or bowl with a ladle and take to the table with the ice cream.

Serves 6.

CHEESECAKE ICE CREAM

This started off as something of a culinary conceit: I wanted to recreate the flavour of cheesecake in ice-cream form. I don’t claim it’s an original idea – I’d once eaten cheesecake ice cream in a restaurant in LA, scooped into a lozenge-shaped ball and served alongside a mini blueberry pie – but striving for originality is frankly a grievous culinary crime. Never trust the sort of cooking that draws attention to the cook rather than to the food.

Anyway, this works exceptionally well, and is in some respects easier to make than regular cheesecake. I love to fold crushed digestive biscuits into the smooth, familiarly sharp-sweet mixture once it comes out of the ice-cream maker but isn’t yet frozen solid, but you can leave the ice cream palely pure and sandwich it between two intact digestives as you eat.

175ml full-fat milk

200g caster sugar

125g Philadelphia cream cheese

half teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 egg

juice of half a lemon

350ml double cream

50g digestive biscuits, crumbled (optional)

Heat the milk in a pan, and while it’s getting warm, beat together the sugar, Philadelphia, vanilla and egg in a bowl. Still whisking, pour the hot milk into the cream cheese mixture and pour this back into the cleaned-out pan and make a
custard
in the regular way.

Pour into a bowl and let it cool, at which time add the lemon juice and then the double cream, lightly whipped.

Freeze
following the usual instructions, folding in the crushed digestives – if using – before the ice cream is set solid.

MARGARITA ICE CREAM

This is surely what angels would eat at their hen night. I suppose it’s the hopeful point of all cooking that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but never has this been more dreamily exemplified.

375ml double cream

6 large egg yolks

397g tin sweetened condensed milk

90ml tequila

30ml Triple Sec, Cointreau or even Grand Marnier, whatever you have to hand (I am permissive on this one)

juice of 6 limes and the zest of 1

Make a
custard
by heating the cream, whisking it into the egg yolks, and then pouring the mixture back into the cleaned-out pan, then cook it, stirring, until it’s thickened. Pour it into a bowl and leave to cool a little, then stir in the condensed milk, tequila and Triple Sec (or Cointreau or Grand Marnier: I have used each of these in my time), lime juice and zest and then leave to cool completely before
freezing
in the normal way.

For utter, unapologetic perfection, serve the ice cream in margarita glasses that you’ve first dipped in lime juice and then into a half-and-half, salt and sugar mixture. But just scooped into bowls, or on to cornets, this is hard to beat.

Serves 8.

HONEY SEMIFREDDO

A semifreddo is not quite an ice cream, as the name – semi-cold, in translation – suggests. There’s no custard to make, and no churning required as it freezes, which makes life very much easier. What you get is a smooth, soft block of chilled, almost frozen cream, with a texture of deep, deep velvetiness. This mellow, honey-flavoured version matches taste to texture. For some reason, sometimes when I make it, I end up with a block of uniformly buff cream; at others, I’m left with a honeyed, resin-coloured stripe along the base – or the top as it stands when you turn it out. But that’s cooking for you. Either way, it works wonderfully. Pour more amber-coloured honey over as you serve, and scatter with toasted pine nuts, for quite the dreamiest, easiest pudding you could imagine.

1 egg

4 egg yolks

100g best-quality honey, plus 3 tablespoons or so for serving

300ml double cream

25g pine nuts, toasted

Line a 900g/1 litre loaf tin with clingfilm.

Beat the egg and egg yolks with the honey in a bowl, over a saucepan of gently simmering water, until the mixture is pale and thick. I use a wire balloon whisk for this, but if you feel like a bit of culinarily aided whirring, it will certainly be quicker with a hand-held electric whisk.

Whip the double cream until thick, and then gently fold in the egg and honey mixture. Pour into the prepared loaf tin, and cover carefully with clingfilm before putting it in the freezer for about 2–3 hours.