Whilst out shopping the other day, my daughter asked for an ice cream from a street vendor; of course, as you would expect of any discerning child, she opted for chocolate and savored every mouthful 
This gave me a thought; when I was a kid, my Mum always kept a tub of ice cream in the freezer, complete with a packet of cones in the cupboard (and if we were lucky, then a pack of those flaky chocolate fingers to stick in the ice cream!). I promised my daughter that we would buy a nice tub of ice cream to take home for future treats, however, when I picked up several tubs from the local shop, I began to read the ingredients and realised that the preservatives and additives contained in each would undoubtedly send her in to a frenzy of hyper-activity….what to do?
We then spied an ice cream maker and like in all great cartoon moments, you could almost see the light bulb appear from above my head! However, being slightly naive, I read the front of the box which stated, “make ice cream in 20 minutes”…..this got my daughter and I very excited indeed and we promptly headed home armed with our ‘miracle machine’. The initial excitement was soon dampened by my slightly more grounded wife, who questioned how perhaps I wondered how you could take warm ingredients and turn them in to a frozen product in just 20 minutes? Ok, so perhaps I should have read the rest of the box, which indicated the need to place the ice cream maker in the freezer for 12 hours prior to mixing…
So, 12 hours later, our excitement was on a par with 12 hours earlier! My daughters favourite fruit is strawberry, so we agreed to make strawberry ice cream. To me, this is fantastic because as with other forms of cooking, you know exactly what is going in to the food and you have full and complete control of this; no additives, no preservatives, no colouring and no flavourings, just plain and simple, quality, fresh produce.
Here’s the recipe we used:
- 1 Punnet of strawberries (approx 500g)
- 1/2 Pint (300ml) of double cream (ok, so it’s not going to be the most healthy, but who cares?!)
- approx 100g of sugar (we actually used less than this because the strawberries were particularly sweet, so just use to-taste)
- Juice of 1 lemon
And the fun bit:
- Whiz up the strawberries in a food processor or blender
- Mix in the sugar, cream and lemon juice
- Follow the instructions of your ice cream maker
- Spoon on to a cone and enjoy!