Strawberry Icecream

All hail the strawberry!! So versatile. Of course they are perfect in a bowl with a sprinkle of sugar or cream, but if you’re willing to put a bit more effort in then you can create this sumptuous ice-cream. I'm currently on my jolly holidays in Bournemouth:

..and this icecream reminds me of the creamy deliciousness you can get on the pier.

My mother, who knows me very well, got me Nigella’s summer cookbook, and it is full of delicious light sweets and savouries. Of course, I flicked right to the ice-cream section. I’m only human.

It does take a bit of effort, making your custard-base (the only way to do ice-cream) and prepping the strawbs, then letting it cool, then churning in the good old ice-cream maker, then freezing. But I can’t think of a better way to spend my day, especially when the outcome is food perfection.

 serves four regular people or two portions for one hungry boyfriend

Ingredients

• 250g strawberries
• 90g caster sugar, plus 1 tbsp
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• 250ml full fat milk
• 250ml double cream
• 5 egg yolks
• 1 tsp corn flour
• 1 tbsp lemon juice

Method

Roughly chop strawberries, put in a bowl and sprinkle over the 1 tbsp of sugar. Leave to infuse while you prep the rest.

Pour the milk, cream, sugar and vanilla sugar into a saucepan and heat gently, bringing nearly to the boil. Take off the heat. Whisk the egg yolks with corn flour, then pour the milk mixture over this, whisking together.

Put all of it back in the pan and stir until the custard thickens. I do this over a medium-low heat, so as to avoid it getting too hot and splitting.

Pour into a bowl and let cool. In hindsight, I should have set the bowl over a slightly smaller bowl of iced water to help the cooling process along, because it took a while.

When the custard is cool, puree the strawberries in a food processor and pour into the custard mixture along with the lemon juice. 

Fold in carefully.

Pour into the ice-cream maker and let churn for 20-30 minutes. Then pour into a plastic container and freeze to harden. If you don’t have an ice-cream maker, skip that stage and just pour it into a plastic tub and place in the freezer, taking out once an hour for three hours and either beating by hand or placing in the food processor, to prevent crystal formation. Replace in the freezer after each stirring.

I meant to get far nicer photos to do this amazing dessert justice (I even bought nice sundae glasses!) but my boyfriend scoffed the lot before I could set it up a bit nicer.

Scoop and serve!