Making things: ice-cream

A couple of years' ago my sister gave us a lovely present, of a low-tech ice-cream maker, and so every so often, we make our own ice-cream. (We bought some cream today so we can make some to have with apple crumble, when my parents come for supper later in the week.) The machine we have is about the size of a small mixing-bowl, and needs to be put in the freezer for a while before being used. Once it has been chilled, it only takes about half an hour for the ice-cream maker to turn your cream, sugar, and other ingredients into ice-cream; if you taste the mixture before putting it into the machine, it may taste horribly sweet, but it will taste quite different once frozen.

In terms of flavours, we have added chocolate chips or gratings – creating something along the lines of the straciatella ice-cream we liked so much in Italy, and, another time, peanut butter to remind us of amazing ice-cream eaten at an ice-cream farm in Scotland; another successful flavour was brown bread. (I hope I do not sound too greedy when mentioning the major food associations we have with all our holidays?) By the way, as well as the peanut butter the Scottish ice-cream farm made some other wonderful flavours which we have not yet tried to replicate, including turkish delight and rhubarb crumble..

It is fun using the machine, though it does make quite a bit of noise, and the ice-cream produced is definitely cheaper than the fancy brands we like eating as a treat. (It probably does not work out cheaper than margarine-style ice-cream, but is a rather different experience from that.)