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Following on from a succulent leg of lamb could be a rich ice cream.

Notwithstanding that yellow powder, making ice cream is pretty easy – basically it’s frozen custard. You’ll need eggs, caster sugar, cream, vanilla, plus whatever flavour you want your ice cream to be.

In this instance, I’m making a chocolate, orange and brandy-flavoured ice cream, without the use of an ice-cream churner. I’m only saying that because I’ve never used one before.

Before we start, I would say that this recipe isn’t cheap. You’ll get about a litre of ice-cream, but the ingredients will cost about eight or nine quid. Having said that, I don’t know where you can buy chocolate, orange & brandy ice-cream.

So…

Break the eggs, and separate the yolk from the whites – it’s the yolks you’ll need first. For every egg, you’ll ned about 20-25g of sugar. For the quantities I’m dealing with, I’ll go for four eggs, and 100-ish grammes of sugar. Stir the egg yolks and sugar rapidly together, until they form a thickened pale yellow… gunk. I’m sure there’s a word for this mixture, but as an untrained amateur foodie, ‘gunk’ is going to have to suffice.

Meanwhile, pour a 600ml pot of double cream (none of this milk/cream mix – we’re going for the full fat rich ice cream here) into a pan and add a split vanilla pod with the seeds removed, and place on the stove until just below boiling, then take off the heat, and allow to cool and infuse for 10 minutes. After that remove the pod for use another day.

Vanilla – much better for flavouring ice cream than flavouring over-powering girly perfume

Once the cream has cooled sufficiently, slowly stir in the yolk gunk, (some people add cream to the egg – I find either way works) and return to a very low heat.

If the cream is too hot, you risk scrambling the eggs. Then you’re screwed, and you may well have to start again.

Constantly stir the new cream/egg mix, and you’ll find it thickening a little. Once you can draw a line through it which doesn’t immediately close up, you’re about there – about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a bowl sitting on a barely-simmering bowl of water (an improvised bain-marie) melt the chocolate. Take two 100g bars, and melt one and a half of these. The other half oe one put aside for the time being. I tend to go for the 85% dark chocolate – it’s very rich. I certainly avoid flavoured chocolates (I can add flavours myself), and that Cadbury’s brown lard muck.

Add to the melted chocolate the grated rind of an orange; I find Seville oranges are best, but that’s just my choice. Add also about a tablespoon of brandy. In this instance, the budget stuff from the supermarket will do.

Add the melted chocolate to the custard, and stir as much or as little as you wish. Allow to cool, possibly over a bowl of ice water, and transfer everything to a plastic bowl with a lid – a recycled ice-cream tub will do. Place this in the freezer, with the lid on. Chop up the remaining half-bar of chocolate and soak the chips in a small puddle of brandy.

After around a couple of hours it will start to solidify. However, the moisture from the air which is still in the tub will also freeze and crystals may well begin to form, so stir the mixture for a few seconds, adding the brandy-soaked chocolate chippings. Repeat the stirring at hourly intervals for the next 3-4 hours.

By then, you ought to have a tub of rich, dark full-flavoured chocolate ice-cream with a hint of orange, and a hit of brandy.

Options (1): Now for the forgotten egg whites. You can either make meringues out of them, in which case, knock yourself out. Or… you can whip the egg whites to a point before they become meringue-ified, and add that to the mix to fluff up and bulk out the ice cream. That idea might appall the purists, but volume aside, I don’t think it makes a huge difference to the final result.

Options (2): If you don’t want to make ice-cream, and are happy with custard, stop the process at the ‘about 10 minutes’ point above.

Options (2a): If you are happy with custard, but want a more caramel-y type custard, use dark muscavado sugar instead of caster sugar

Options (3): Dark rum will work just as well as brandy, if that is your preference.

Options (4): If you don’t have vanilla pods, you can use vanilla extract. Or, if you really feel like it, leave out the vanilla entirely.

Cheers, Al