Pear & caramel icecream

July 18-19, 2015

Last week I enthusiastically renewed our vege box order with CERES.... except that I actually ordered an all-fruit box instead of a mixed fruit & veg box. We were beset by multitudes of bananas, apples, kiwi fruits, oranges and grapefruit, more than a dozen mandarins, a couple of limes and four pears. We've been working through them - stirring the limes into creme fraiche for sweet potato wedges, packing apples into our bags for work and punctuating our days at home with mandarin peeling. I made a big batch of rice pudding to enjoy with the kiwi fruits and some apple & walnut pancakes once, too. The bananas are only just ripe now.

Three of the four pears went into this David Lebovitz icecream recipe, prepared for dessert when we had some friends over. They're cooked in caramel, blended smooth, then strained and churned into a rich, velvety scoop. The caramel procedure, which I've used for salted caramel icecreams, always gets me nervous - it teeters on burning in some spots while others wait their turn to melt. The flavour in the mixture stayed just on the right side of bitter and mellowed out a lot during churning and freezing. The pear ended up playing subtle too - sweet and fruity pre-churn, later forming flecks of texture and leaving just a whisper of flavour. It was rather upstaged by the excellent chocolate self-saucing pudding that one of our guests brought, and we've made a point of eating the leftovers without that kind of delicious distraction.

The most striking feature of this dessert was the 48% milk fat cream that I used. It made for a rich, languorous icecream that was easy to scoop and didn't melt, even after half a hour of sitting at the table, waiting for us to serve seconds.

Pear & caramel icecream
(a recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop)

3 medium-sized ripe pears
3/4 cup castor sugar
500mL heavy cream
pinch of salt
a squeeze of lemon juice

Peel the pears and remove their cores. Dice them up finely.

Place the sugar in a medium saucepan and set it over consistent medium heat. Given enough time, the sugar will liquefy and turn brown. You can use a wooden spoon to gently shift the unmelted sugar towards the heat.

When the sugar has entirely melted to amber caramel, add the pears. A bunch of the caramel will seize up around the pears, but don't worry about it - just keep stirring the pears into the caramel and allowing the sugar to melt back down. Let it all to cook, stirring regularly, for about 10-15 minutes, until the pear is tender.

Turn off the heat and add the cream - just a couple of tablespoons to start, and then bigger and bigger portions until it's all well mixed. Stir in the salt and lemon juice. Refrigerate the mixture until it's very cold, preferably overnight.

When the mixture is very cold, use a stick blender to puree the pears until they're as smooth as possible. Strain the mixture to make sure the worst fibrous bits are out. Churn the smooth icecream mixture an icecream maker and freeze it for at least 4 hours before serving.

Rhubarb & strawberry sorbet

November 1-2, 2014

I'd kind of promised icecream for our pizza party, but then I got all excited about that baked ginger cheesecake. I figured something fruit-based might best match it and pulled out The Perfect Scoop for a browse. It didn't take long to pick the rhubarb and strawberry sorbet.

If you're comfortable stewing rhubarb and have a food processor or blender then you've got this recipe sewn up - the method's reasonably simple and the ingredient list is simpler still. I found that the sorbet's consistency was a little crystalline straight from the freezer, but it became soft and frothy as it melted. It was a cool and tangy contrast to a dense, creamy and spicy cheesecake.

Rhubarb & strawberry sorbet
(adapted very slightly from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop)

400g rhubarb
2/3 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
250g punnet strawberries
1/2 teaspoon squeeze lemon juice

Wash the rhubarb, remove the leaves and trim the stems. Slice the stalks into 2cm lengths. Place them in a medium-large saucepan with the water and sugar. Bring it all to the boil, then turn down the heat and pop a lid on top, simmering the rhubarb for 5-10 minutes until cooked through. Let the rhubarb cool to room temperature before continuing.

Wash and hull the strawberries. Place them in a food processor with the rhubarb and its syrup and squeeze over the lemon juice. Blend it all together very thoroughly, until it is as smooth as possible. Refrigerate the mixture until it is very cold, ideally overnight.

Churn the sorbet mixture according to the manufacturer's instructions and freeze it for at least 4 hours before serving.

Vanilla peach frozen yoghurt

January 13-14, 2014

Four of Michael's aunts and uncles flew to Melbourne for a scorching few days of tennis, and we made sure to have them over for a meal in our chilled-out air-conditioned flat. Michael put on a summery Mexican-inspired spread of refried beans, tofu chicharrones, corn salad, tortillas and fresh veges, and I churned up this vanilla peach frozen yoghurt.

It's a surprisingly simple formula from the often-more-convoluted David Lebovitz. This time it was me complicating things, adding in orange essence, vanilla and a pinch of salt where Lebovitz listed only a simple dash of lemon juice. Thankfully I managed not to detract from the key feature: a bag of white peaches. You can see that they don't add much to the colour of this dessert, but I promise that they lend plenty of flavour.

The yoghurt is definitely secondary to the fruit - this comes off as equal parts refreshing sorbet and creamy dairy-based dessert. I'd love to try making it with coconut yoghurt as a vegan alternative.

Vanilla peach frozen yoghurt
(adapted slightly from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop)


700g (about 5) ripe peaches
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 cup natural yoghurt
a few drops of lemon juice
a few drops of orange essence (optional)
pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Slice the peaches into quarters, remove them from their stones, and peel off their skins. Chop the peaches into chunks and place them in a large saucepan. Pour in the water and place the saucepan on medium heat, covering it with a lid. Cook the peaches until tender, about 10 minutes, removing the lid occasionally to stir them. Take the peaches off the heat, stir in the sugar (it should dissolve rapidly) and refigerate the peaches overnight.

The next day, transfer the peaches to a food processor and add in the yoghurt. Whizz the mixture until it's well mixed and mostly smooth. Add the lemon juice, orange essence, salt and vanilla, whizz again, taste and adjust the flavour as you like it.

Churn the mixture in an icecream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Vietnamese coffee ice cream

March 2, 2013

One of our favourite companions to a Vietnamese meal is Vietnamese-style iced coffee. So after we'd picked out bánh xèo I swapped Plenty for David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, which I knew contained a recipe for Vietnamese coffee ice cream.

I didn't end up following Lebovitz's recipe too closely - if you track it down you'll see that I omitted the pinch of ground coffee and the awfully American half-and-half. And since I had the supplies on hand, I went vegan with soy condensed milk instead of using the usual dairy stuff.

This ice cream has the signature bittersweetness of the drink and ended up with some of the iciness too - unfortunately I couldn't coax it to whip up properly in my icecream maker. It was quite scoopable and very edible regardless.

Vietnamese coffee ice cream
(inspired by a recipe in David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop)

250mL/330g can (soy) sweetened condensed milk
200mL espresso

Whisk together the ingredients in a bowl. Refrigerate them until thoroughly chilled, then churn in an icecream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Chocolate & raspberry icecream

February 26-27, 2012

February set forth a last blast of heat and I resolved to churn some more icecream. I revisited my vegan salted caramel one and it was spectacular, but then I went and shared most of the batch with friends. I needed MOAR ICECREAM and I didn't really want to leave our air-conditioned fortress to buy it or its constituent ingredients.

Flicking through The Perfect Scoop, I noticed a chocolate and raspberry icecream that didn't include eggs. I had (frozen) raspberries and I had no eggs! With coconut milk in the cupboard I figured a vegan version (no heavy cream) was the easiest solution. It all really was quite easy, though it left me with a dirty food processor and sieve (for Michael) to clean up.

This version is also lighter on the cocoa than David's because I ran out 3 tablespoons in. It's still chocolatey enough (look at the colour) but it's more like a milky chocolate that leaves plenty of space for raspberry fruitiness.

Chocolate & raspberry icecream
(adapted from a recipe in David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop)

1 can (400mL) coconut milk
3 tablespoons cocoa
2/3 cup castor sugar
2 cups frozen raspberries

In a medium saucepan, stir together the coconut milk, cocoa and sugar. Bring them to the boil, stirring regularly, and then take them off the heat. Fold in the raspberries, cover the saucepan and allow it to sit for 10 minutes.

Blend the mixture to smoothness - to prevent disaster with my food processor, this meant I fished out most of the raspberries and blended them first, gradually adding the rest of the liquid. Strain out the raspberry seeds and refrigerate the mixture until completely cold.

Churn the mixture in an icecream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions and freeze until firm.

Date, rum & pecan icecream

November 27-28, 2011

I was on quite a dessert kick last weekend, turning out two batches of cupcakes and then this icecream. I was looking for an actual chocolate-less dessert as I browsed through The Perfect Scoop, and I picked this one because Michael's rather partial to rum and raisin flavoured sweets. He pitched in by bringing home a small bottle of Bundy Rum, a liquor best characterised by Rich Hall, and trashily appropriate since we ended up sharing the icecream with a bunch of Queenslanders.

Michael didn't bring home as much cream as the recipe required, yet I didn't attempt any substitutes for it, so this was a pretty intense dessert (the 3-scoop serving pictured above would satisfy 2-3 people!). In particular it was very boozy - if that's not your thing I'd suggest soaking the dates as directed (or replacing some of the rum with water, perhaps) and omitting the extra rum that goes into the custard. On this occasion it was my thing; I loved the way the dark rum stretched into the rich caramel of the dates and the yolk-heavy custard.

Date, rum & pecan icecream
(adapted slightly from a recipe in The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz)

80g dried dates
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons dark rum
115g pecans
200mL heavy cream
6 egg yolks
1 cup milk
2/3 cup castor sugar
big pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Chop the dates into chunks and place them in a small saucepan. Pour over 1/4 cup of dark rum. Bring to the boil, then take the saucepan off the heat and set the dates aside at room temperature for at least 4 hours.

Roughly chop the pecans and gently toast them (I did this in the oven).

In a large bowl (ideally one with a lid!), pour in the cream and set a sieve over the top.

Place the egg yolks in a small-medium bowl, whisking them to smoothness.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, mix together the milk, sugar and salt. Stir them together until everything's warm and the sugar is dissolved. Gradually pour the warmed milk into the egg yolks, whisking as you go. When it's all well mixed, transfer it back into the saucepan on medium heat. Stir the mixture constantly, scraping the bottom and sides of the saucepan to avoid burning and sticking, until the custard thickens.

Pour the custard through the sieve onto the cream. Whisk in the remaining 2 tablespoons of rum and the vanilla. Refrigerate the mixture for several hours, until thoroughly chilled.

Churn the icecream mixture in an icecream machine, according to the manufacturer's instructions. In the last few minutes of churning, add the dates and pecans to mix the through. Freeze the icecream for several hours, until firm and scoopable.

January 30 - February 5, 2011: Cherry sorbet

Though three years have passed, I didn't forget Lucy's comment about David Lebovitz's cherry sorbet.  And finally I've made it happen this summer.  It's one of David's less fussy recipes (a feature I'm sure appealed to Lucy); the ingredients are just cooked down for a quarter hour, pureed in a blender than cooled and churned.

I skipped the almond extract/kirsch element of the original recipe, since I hate one and lack the other.  And I added my staple icecream-making step of straining the mixture for guaranteed smoothness.  Regardless, I imagine that my sorbet shared the same key element as David and Lucy's batches - a pure, intense cherry flavour.

Since the cherries I used were dark, over-ripe and very sweet the taste here was admittedly a little flat.  I bet other cherry (and berry) varieties would show more moxie.  A bit more lemon juice or some liquor would no doubt do the trick too.  It's certainly a base worth tinkering with - not too fiddly, it churns to a beautiful light texture, and allows plenty of space for the feature fruit to shine.

Cherry sorbet
(adapted slightly from a recipe in David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop)

~500g cherries
1/2 cup water
scant 1/2 cup castor sugar
squeeze of lemon juice

Remove the stems and pits from the cherries; you can be messy about it since they'll be pureed eventually. Place all of the ingredients in a small-medium saucepan over moderate heat. Stir them occasionally as they cook for 10-15 minutes and take them off the heat when the cherries are soft all the way through.

Bring the mixture to room temperature, then puree it in a blender or food processor. Strain the mixture then chill it thoroughly in the fridge.

Churn the mixture in an icecream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

January 22-23, 2011: Spicy pecan chocolate icecream

More than a month after my icecream party, we finally got down to the last few leftover scoops and I could justify popping the canister back into the freezer for dessert with Mike and Jo.  Loosely following the Latin theme and swinging away from our vegan stock, I browsed David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop and picked out the Aztec "Hot" Chocolate Ice Cream.  Unlike many of his other recipes, this one is egg-free and isn't too equipment heavy - all the ingredients are whisked into the one saucepan, though David instructs us to blend them before chilling and churning.  Instead I strained my mixture between chilling and churning and I'm quietly confident that my icecream was just as smooth.

I didn't have any fancy smoked chile powder but I reckon my stash performed pretty well.  The unchurned mixture and first day's scoops brought a gentle, slow warmth to the back of my throat, leaving plenty of room to taste the rich, satiny chocolate.  A few days later the chile was more outspoken and the chocolate receded into the background; the smooth texture largely remained.

The cookbook points out a recipe for Spiced Pecans as the perfect pairing to this icecream, and I was keen for the extra texture.  Ironically, this recipe does use egg whites - how much more convenient it would have been if this icecream had been one of Lebovitz's yolk-heavy standards!  They're used as a binder for the sugar and spices and are no doubt supposed to leave the pecans with an attractive lacquered surface.  I didn't get this bit quite right.  Where the recipe says 2 tablespoons, I used the whites of two eggs.  This was clearly a larger volume and led to some awkward frothy batter bits once the pecans began baking.  In future I'd be tempted to do away with the egg altogether, substituting it and the brown sugar for maple syrup or agave nectar.

The pecans were pretty great, nevertheless, and I chopped about half of them up to churn through the icecream.  These ones didn't make much of an impact.  The other half, which we used whole as a garnish, held their crunch much better and made that promised perfect pairing.

Spicy chocolate icecream
(a very nearly faithful rendition of David Lebovitz's Aztec "Hot" Chocolate Ice Cream from The Perfect Scoop)

2 1/4 cups cream
6 tablespoons cocoa
3/4 cup castor sugar
85g dark chocolate
1 1/4 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon chile powder, or to taste
2 tablespoons brandy
1 cup spiced pecans, optional

In a large saucepan, whisk together the cream, cocoa and castor sugar.  Place the saucepan on medium-high heat and bring the mixture to a boil.  Remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the chocolate until it's completely melted through.  Add the remaining ingredients and stir thoroughly to combine.  Chill the mixture thoroughly (preferably overnight).  Strain the mixture to remove lumps and churn in an icecream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

If you're using the spiced pecans, chop them roughly and add them to the churner 10 minutes before the icecream is done.

Spiced pecans
(from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop)

2 tablespoons egg whites (yes, really - not just '2 egg whites')
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
pinch of ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon chile powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups pecans
spray oil

Preheat the oven to 150°C.  Line a baking tray with paper and lightly spray it with oil.

In a medium-large bowl, whisk the eggwhite briefly so that it's nice and loose.  Whisk in the brown sugar, spices and vanilla, then toss through the pecans until they're evenly coated.

Transfer the nuts to the baking tray and spread them out evenly.  If you have extra liquid in the bottom of the bowl, it's probably best that you don't pour it all over the tray.  Bake the pecans for about 30 minutes, tossing them at 10 minute intervals, until they're toasty and dry.  Allow them to cool completely before using them.

January 17-19, 2010: Saffron icecream

I think the best end to an Indian meal is something milky, cooling and sweet. I've got a few such recipes in my repertoire already, but I wanted to see what David Lebovitz and his Perfect Scoop cookbook could do for me. It turns out he does a fine saffron icecream. The ingredient list looks very much like that of a standard vanilla icecream, with the custard simply being infused with saffron instead of vanilla pods or extract.

In his perfectionist fashion, Lebovitz's recipe involved multiple bowls and saucepans and I couldn't help cutting a few corners. However, I didn't scrimp on the saffron - we received a sizable sample of this pricey spice for Christmas a year ago so I extravagantly doubled the recipe to make a litre of icecream. Actually, it's a rich dessert and a small scoop each after a large meal sufficed, so the original half-litre probably would have fed the six of us.

Saffron has a colour and flavour all its own, and it really permeates the custard. If anything, it reminds me here of honey, sweet and fragrant. I served rosewater-sprinkled orange segments alongside, and their gentle acidity made for a nice contrast.


Saffron icecream
(slightly adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, quantity doubled)

1 cup milk
2 cups cream
1 cup castor sugar
scant teaspoon of saffron threads
6 egg yolks

In a medium saucepan over low-medium heat, dissolve the sugar in the milk and cream. Take the saucepan off the heat and stir through the saffron. Refrigerate the mixture for 4 hours.

Strain the mixture to retrieve the saffron threads. Keep the threads in a medium bowl, and reheat the infused cream in the saucepan. Whisk the egg yolks in a small bowl and whisk in a little of the infused cream. Whisk the egg mixture back into the saucepan and cook the mixture, stirring continuously, until the custard thickens.

Strain the custard into the reserved saffron threads and refrigerate the mixture until it's completely cold. Churn and freeze the custard according to the icecream manufacturer's instructions.

January 1, 2010: Chocolate sorbet

After my savoury sundae I reverted to more conventional, sweet ice cream making. Or sorbet making, at least - this chocolate ice is dairy and egg-free, and appears in the sorbet section of David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop. I was actually able to make it entirely from ingredients we already had at home, thanks to the many chocolates we were given over Christmas!

The curious step that Lebovitz includes in his recipe is blending the sorbet mixture once the chocolate has been melted into it. I was pretty sure that my food processor wouldn't be able to smooth it out any further, so I replaced this step with some straining just before churning. A lot of the chocolate solids were removed from the liquid this way, yet the sorbet still came out a little grainy. It wasn't unpleasant; just not as silky-smooth as I'd hoped. It reminded me a lot of the cashew-based chocolate vicecream I made almost a year ago.

This recipe will certainly bring a smile to the face of the sweet-toothed vegan or dark chocolate-lover in your life, but I don't think I've yet found my ideal vegan-friendly iced chocolate.

Chocolate sorbet
(based on a recipe in The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz)

2 1/4 cups water
1 cup castor sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder
pinch of salt
170g dark chocolate (I used half 70% Lindt, half 85% Lindt)
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a large saucepan, whick together 1 1/2 cups of the water, sugar, cocoa and salt. Bring the mixture to the boil and allow it to continue to boil for a minute, whisking all the while. Turn off the heat and stir in the chocolate. When the chocolate has completely melted, stir in the vanilla and the remaining 3/4 cup water. Chill the mixture thoroughly.

Strain and discard (or eat!) the cocoa solids. Churn and freeze the liquid in an icecream maker.

November 15, 2009: Mango-coconut spliced icecream

This week was the optimal time to kick off a new season of icecream making. The weather was warm, a mango was ripening dangerously in the fruit bowl, and I wanted to make a light-ish dessert for our Sunday night guests. David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop index indicated that mango sorbet was the go, though I only had enough mango for a half-batch. David didn’t leave me hangin’, noting at the end of the recipe that it goes brilliantly swirled through his toasted coconut icecream. Sold! I stocked up on the required ingredients and only then felt the first pang of uncertainty when I read the recipe method properly.

There’s no coconut in the custard. I mean, there is coconut in the custard during the process, but it’s just supposed to infuse everything with its flavour and get strained out. I was skeptical, even when the coconut came out of the oven so fragrant, and an hour later when the coconut-custard mix tasted so golden-sweet. The flavour did dull down when it was diluted with more cream, but there was no denying that toasty tropical aftertaste. The infusion actually worked! (I’ll never doubt you again, David Lebovitz.)

A pastry chef by training and eternal connoisseur of all things sweet, David doesn’t do short cuts – his recipes involve an irritating number of saucepans and bowls and ice-baths. The rich custards of egg yolks, whole milk and cream seem distinctly French, and defy veganisation. But the superb results cannot be denied.

The mango sorbet on the other hand, is both vegan-friendly and lazy cook-friendly – everything just gets pureed together in a food processor. I didn’t even churn it, simply layering the mango between fluffy cream clouds. The sorbet was probably a little icier than it needed to be, but it made a refreshing contrast to the much heavier coconut custard.

Mango-coconut spliced icecream
(based on David Lebovitz's recipes for toasted coconut icecream and mango sorbet in The Perfect Scoop)

toasted coconut custard
1 cup dried shredded unsweetened coconut
1 cup milk
2 cups cream
3/4 cup castor sugar
generous pinch salt
5 egg yolks
1 teaspoon bourbon vanilla

mango sorbet swirl
1 large ripe mango
1/3 cup castor sugar
1/3 cup water
juice of one lime
2 teaspoons Cointreau
pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 175ºC. Spread the coconut on a baking tray and bake it for 5-8 minutes, stirring it at least twice, until it's fragrant and golden brown.

In a medium saucepan over gentle heat, stir together the milk, half of the cream, the sugar and salt, until the sugar has dissolved. Stir through the shredded coconut. Remove the mixture from the heat, cover it and allow it to infuse for an hour.

Reheat the coconut cream, then strain out the coconut - press down firmly on the coconut to extract as much liquid as possible. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Whisk in a little of the warm coconut-infused cream, then pour it all back into the saucepan. Whisk the eggs through the cream mixture, returning this saucepan to medium heat and stirring until the custard thickens.

Pour the remaining cream into a large bowl and strain the custard into the bowl. Stir them together well, adding the bourbon vanilla along the way. Chill the mixture thoroughly.

Cut the mango flesh away from the pit and place it in a food processor. Add the remaining sorbet ingredients to the food processor and puree the lot until it's smooth.

Churn the toasted coconut custard in an icecream maker until fluffy (mine took 20 minutes). Layer the toasted coconut and mango mixtures in a container before freezing the icecream for at least 4 hours.

July 9, 2009: Butterscotch sultana duff and frozen yoghurt

I was a little surprised that our recent request for warming winter recipes didn't yield any comforting desserts! Never mind - that other regular feature, the Calendar Recipe, provided just the thing for July. I'm not familiar with duffs and a brief browse around the internet hasn't got me knowing them much better - they seem generally to be steamed or baked puddings, though they might also be cookies or pastries.

This particular recipe had me wondering if duffs are a product of hard times: it's egg-free and contains very little butter (though other online versions contain plenty of both). There is admittedly plenty of sugar involved, yet the sweetness comes equally from sultanas. What I found most unusual about the recipe was its consistency as I prepared it. The dough is quite stiff, like a biscuit dough, and sat barely an inch deep in my casserole dish. Meanwhile the butterscotch sauce is extremely watery and much larger in volume than the pudding dough! Over the hour that it baked, the dough absorbed much of the liquid and the butterscotch sauce thickened. The pudding rose almost to the top of the dish before subsiding again as it cooled (check out the tide lines in the photograph above!).

So, this duff here is essentially a self-saucing pudding. The cake is quite coarse (presumably from the lack of fat) and becomes quite tough as it cools so is best eaten freshly baked or patiently reheated. However the sauce and dried fruit provide plenty of moist sweetness - any sultana lover will be pleased to dig into this on a cold night.

The recipe recommends serving the duff with ice-cream or vanilla custard. Instead I decided to try the vanilla frozen yoghurt from The Perfect Scoop - it's a ridiculously simple mixture of natural yoghurt, sugar and vanilla. While I loved the flavour, this iced confection came out a little powdery and not quite scoopable. Still, there's plenty of weeks ahead to perfect this for summer, right?

Butterscotch sultana duff

1 1/3 cups plain flour
2 2/3 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup sultanas
1/2 cup milk
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups boiling water

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease a large casserole dish.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Stir through the sugar and raisins, then mix in the milk to form a stiff dough. Spread the dough evenly over the base of the casserole dish.

Stir together the brown sugar, butter and boiling water until the sugar has dissolved and the butter has melted. Gently and slowly pour it into the casserole dish. Bake the lot for 45-60 minutes, until the pudding is cooked through.


Vanilla frozen yoghurt
(based on the recipe in The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz)

500g natural yoghurt
2/3 cup castor sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Thoroughly stir together the ingredients in a bowl, until the sugar has dissolved. Chill the mixture for an hour or two before churning it in an ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

February 1, 2009: Watermelon sorbet

I was hardly going to invite people over for dinner without offering dessert, and this spate of hot weather called for sorbet. It's been years since I've tried to churn up a sorbet, even though perfecting lemon sorbet was one of my main aims when I initially bought an icecream maker. Back then I experimented many times with different quantities of lemon juice, sugar syrup, and soaking lemon rind but never did I get the taste and texture right simultaneously - often I failed on both counts!

If anyone could help, I figured, it would be David Lebovitz. Before travelling to the markets on Saturday morning I flipped through the sorbet section of The Perfect Scoop, making notes on all the fruity concoctions that might be seasonal. It was a long shopping list: "Buy 1kg cherries 1 lemon OR 8 limes OR 6 lemons OR 8 plums 1 punnet raspberries OR..." When I spotted the watermelons in the organic section of the markets I was sold, regardless of the (steep!) price of the lime I'd also need to churn up Lebovitz's watermelon sorbet. It's accompanied in the book by an irresistibly cute picture - the sorbet has been frozen into iceblock molds, and what looks like the melon's black seeds scattered throughout the sorbet are actually miniature choc chips.

Now choc chips are another blemish on my record of icecream making. When frozen, they don't taste like much, and I've never found a brand or technique that overcomes this. I half-heartedly checked out a couple of shops for mini choc chips but found only coloured sugar-coated ones; all I was after was a tablespoon or so of the critters anyway. Then I remembered the half-cup of cocoa nibs still in the pantry and decided to give them a go. They looked sadly like broken shards of watermelon seed stirred through the sorbet and my first experimental taste was more grit than flavour. But, ultimately, they really worked in this sorbet; the cocoa flavour asserted itself well through the cold.

Other than these seed substitutes, the watermelon is augmented with lime, vodka and, of course, sugar. Yet none of these ingredients really stand out; they just serve to heighten the watermelonyness of it all. And that's all you need. Well, that and the occasional crunchy hit of cocoa, nib-style.


Watermelon sorbet
(based on watermelon sorbetto from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz)

~2kg watermelon (including rind)
100g sugar
pinch of salt
juice of half a lime
2 cap-fulls vodka
1 generous tablespoon cocoa nibs

Cut the rind away from the watermelon, slice it into large chunks, and do your best to pick out the seeds. In two or three shifts, puree the watermelon in a food processor. Though David didn't mention it, I then strained the watermelon, pushing out as much liquid as I could, and discarded the seed-riddled pulp. (But try retaining the pulp and tell me what the sorbet's like!) Either way you're after about 3 cups of juice.

Put 1/2 cup of the juice in a small saucepan with the sugar and salt and warm the mixture, stirring, until the sugar's completely dissolved. Take the sugar syrup off the heat and stir it back into the rest of the watermelon juice. Add the lime juice and vodka, and refrigerate the mixture until it's very cold.

Churn the sorbet in an ice-cream maker, adding the cocoa nibs just a minute before switching it off.

January 11, 2009: Passionfruit icecream

Over our few weeks' holiday and first week of work, I was champing at the bit to get stuck into my new cookbooks. Sushi was a huge success on Friday night; on Saturday I energetically cleared space in the freezer for my icecream maker in time for sweet, sweet Sunday afternoon. Though I'm usually seduced by chocolate, caramel and other such things, a couple of forecast scorching days inspired my to try something fruit-based from David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop.

Don't misunderstand me, though: the base of this passionfruit icecream proved to be one of the richest frozen custards I've ever made. Though the volume of passionfruit juice seemed quite small, it thoroughly permeated the icecream and might have been boosted by the few drops of orange essence. While it was churning, Michael invited Mike and Jo over for dinner; several hours and two Michael-made curries later, it reached the perfect consistency. Firm enough to scoop, but only just so; it was airy, creamy, and just a little bit tangy. Worth every one of the eight overpriced passionfruits that went into it.


Passionfruit icecream

8 passionfruits
1 cup cream
6 tablespoons milk
7 tablespoons sugar
pinch of salt
3 egg yolks
a few drops of orange essence

Halve the passionfruits and use a small spoon to dig out the pulp and seeds. David suggests mushing them through a sieve to extract the pulp; I put them through a food processor first to loosen the mixture. Either way, you're aiming for about 1/2 cup of pulp (without seeds). Reserve about a quarter of the seeds for later. Stir together the pulp and half of the cream in a bowl.

Put the milk, sugar, salt and remaining cream in a saucepan and gently warm them, dissolving the sugar. Whisk the egg yolks in a separate bowl, then slowly pour the warmed cream into the bowl, whisking constantly. When it's all well mixed, pour it back into the saucepan and turn up the heat just a little. Keep stirring, stirring, stirring, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom, until the custard thickens and coats the back of the spoon.

Pour the custard through the sieve and into the passionfruit cream. Stir it all together and allow it to cool a while before stirring through the orange essence. Refrigerate the mixture until it's very cold, then churn it in an icecream maker; throw the reserved passionfruit seeds in towards the end.