Ice cream, ordinarily, is something you dig out of the freezer when in need – it’s cool, creamy comfort food, whether your vice is a cheap choc ice in a striped paper wrapper, or a tub of Ben & Jerry’s swimming with chocolate fish.
It doesn’t tend to be something you make yourself. Kitty Travers, the brains behind La Grotta Ices, is hoping to change that though with her book of ice creams.
“Ice cream is a really good carrier for flavour,” she notes, explaining why she makes fruit ice creams, not just sorbets, and for her, half the fun is trying to “squeeze the most out of every plant and fruit and get the essence of them.”
She’ll crush up apricot stones to add flavour, infuse milk with herbs or peach leaves (“When it’s heated, that’s when the flavour is pulled out”), do cold infusions (“That works well with rose petals”) and macerate fruit like strawberries and nectarines overnight to “trap the perfume and aroma of their skin.”
What do you need to make your own ice-cream
Making ice cream does not require magic or incredible skill, just a few ingredients combined correctly, namely, sugar, milk, cream and eggs – ice cream is basically a custard. Travers believes anyone can do it, once you’ve got the basics down.
Kit-wise she recommends a thermometer, a big heavy-bottomed pan, a whisk, a chinois (for straining) and a ladle, as well as an inexpensive ice cream churner (you can nab one for around £30).
Crucially, saysTravers, you need to get the best produce possible and waste as little as possible, especially if you’re making fruit ice cream (“Fruit is expensive”) and she recommends eating your ice cream as soon as possible. “There’s nothing like freshly churned ice cream,” she says.
Apricot Noyau ice cream
Equipment
- Non-reactive pan
- Rolling Pin
- Pstle and mortar
- Pan
- Whisk or silicone spatula
- Digital thermometer
- Container
- Stick blender
- Small ladle
- Fine-mesh sieve or chinois
- Ice-cream machine
Ingredients
- 375 g fresh apricots halved, stones set aside
- 150 g sugar
- 170 ml whole milk
- 170 ml double cream
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 tsp honey (optional)
Method
- To prepare the ice cream: Simmer the apricot halves gently in a non-reactive pan, just until they are cooked through and piping hot (do not boil). Cool in a sink of iced water then cover and chill in the fridge.
- Place a clean tea towel on a hard surface, then line the apricot stones up along the middle of the towel. Fold the tea towel in half over the apricot stones to cover them and then firmly crack each stone with a rolling pin. Pick the tiny kernel from each shell then grind them in a pestle and mortar with 20g of the sugar.
- Heat the milk, cream and the ground kernel mix in a pan, stirring often with a whisk or silicone spatula to prevent it catching. As soon as the milk is hot and steaming, whisk the yolks with the remaining sugar and honey (if using) until combined.
- Pour the hot liquid over the yolk mix in a thin stream, whisking constantly as you do so, then return all the mix to the pan. Cook gently over a low heat, stirring all the time, until the mix reaches 82°C. As soon as your digital thermometer says 82°C, remove the pan from the heat and set it in a sink full of iced water to cool – you can speed up the process by stirring it every so often. Once entirely cold, pour the custard into a clean container, cover and chill in the fridge.
- To make the ice cream: the following day, use a spatula to scrape the chilled apricots into the custard then blend together with a stick blender until very smooth – blitz for at least two minutes, or until there are only small flecks of apricot skin visible in the mix. Using a small ladle, push the apricot custard through a fine-mesh sieve or chinois into a clean container, squeezing hard to extract as much smooth custard mix as possible. Discard the bits of skin and kernel.
- Pour the custard into an ice cream machine and churn according to the machine’s instructions, usually about 20–25 minutes, or until frozen and the texture of whipped cream.
- Transfer the ice cream to a suitable lidded container. Top with a piece of waxed paper to limit exposure to air, cover and freeze until ready to serve.
Nutrition
La Grotta Ices by Kitty Travers is published by Square Peg. Photography Grant Cornett.
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