Ice Cream

As promised I went off and bought an ice cream machine on the back of all this fruit I will shortly have. I brought it home with fierce excitement along with some cream and set about making the first batch. When it comes to ice cream I have to admit that I do like plain, so therefore I choose vanilla as my first experiment.

It is simple enough to make, you just need some cream, egg yokes, sugar, water and in this case vanilla. How I came to acquire an industrial sized bag of 300 vanilla pods is a long story but suffice to say it came from Sweden via Tahiti or some such place in the back of a smart car!

All you have to do is scald the cream in a saucepan and throw in a vanilla pod which has been cut length ways. Leave that cool while you make a syrup with the water and sugar. Next beat the egg yokes and add the syrup. Lastly whisk the cream into the egg mixture and lash it all into the machine.

It was at this stage that I decided to read the instructions on the ice cream machine and discovered you have to freeze the bloody thing for 12 hours before use. Needless to say this setback dented my enthusiasm considerably. When it was finally ready to go I simply poured the mixture into the machine and turned it on for 20 minutes. What came out of it was the tastiest ice cream I have ever had. An unqualified success!