I’ve spent the last week at home, in Johannesburg, catching up with friends, eating a lot of steak, and cooking – despite what it looks like from my obvious state of absence on this blog. But never fear, I finally feel like writing again and to start I’m going to tell you about this raspberry vanilla ice cream I made.

I’ve been making ice cream almost constantly since Easter. I had a disastrous time then – I have an old school ice cream maker, one where you freeze the cylinder and then churn the ice cream by hand. I didn’t freeze the cylinder for long enough so it was incapable of freezing the litres of ice cream I had made. We had icy custard instead of ice cream. It would’ve been embarrassing if anyone was really bothered but fortunately, my family are very chilled out. My aunt made amazing choux buns instead and everyone was distracted playing badminton and volleyball anyway. I left the ice creams in bowls in the freezer, with instructions for beating every few hours. Apparently they made it into ice cream (one plain vanilla, one raspberry vanilla like this one) and were eaten with meringues (which is weird since that’s how I’m serving the ice cream later). Since being back at my mom’s, I’ve made three ice creams (all for dessert today). The locals keep telling me it’s cold, and to be fair, I did have a jersey on yesterday but today it’s lovely and warm and sunny. It’s positively high summer in my mind and so I thought I’d share the first of the ice cream recipes with you.

I have been making ice cream using various recipes from various chefs. This recipe is adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s book Just Desserts. I’d forgotten about this book – it lives on the shelves here. I was given it as a leaving present when I left the one hotel in Scotland. It is actually an amazing reference point for basic recipes and I can’t believe I haven’t cooked from it more. The vanilla ice cream is a fairly standard recipe although it uses an insane amount of egg yolks. But this results in smooth, voluptuous ice cream which I have tarted up by adding in crushed raspberries. It tastes of high summer. And childhood. (My childhood anyway, and that summer of the berries.)

Raspberry Vanilla Ice Cream

Adapted from Just Desserts by Gordon Ramsay

250ml full cream milk

250ml double cream

50g caster sugar

6 egg yolks

2 vanilla pods

250g raspberries

1 tablespoon icing sugar

Place the milk and cream in a saucepan. Split the vanilla pods length ways and scrape the seeds into the liquid. Add in the pods themselves and heat the mixture until scalding point.

Meanwhile, whisk the yolks and sugar together until slightly paled.

Temper the milk mixture into the egg mixture. (This means pour the milk mixture carefully over the egg mixture, whisking whilst you do so, so as not to scramble the eggs.) Return the mixture to the heat, and cook until the custard has thickened and coats the back of a wooden spoon. Strain into a mixing bowl. I like to add the vanilla pods back into the mixture to infuse overnight.

Cover the custard with clingfilm and chill in the fridge overnight. The next day, pour the custard into your ice cream machine and churn. When it is nearly ready, smash the raspberries and stir the icing sugar into them. Add this to the almost churned ice cream. The raspberries will make the ice cream ever so slightly icy. Freeze completely in a tupperware. Remove from the freezer about 10 – 20 minutes before you want to dish up as this ice cream sets fast. (This also prevents you from standing at the freezer and eating it out of the tub.)