Berry swirl cheesecake ice cream

My other half and I were lucky enough to take advantage of his Dad's bumper crop of strawberries and raspberries over the last couple of weekends and had a haul of about 6 kg in all. When it came to deciding what we were going to do with them, I already had my ideas planned out. I made a not terribly successful strawberry curd, but one thing that really worked was a thick, creamy and luscious ice cream.

I really like making ice cream but making a custard with eggs etc can be a bit of a faff so I thought just simple double cream with some mascarpone would give me a deliciously smooth texture. The ice cream was very popular and didn't last long but with mascarpone and double cream in it it's not exactly low fat so it's for special occassions only!

Ingredients

300 ml double cream
100 ml milk
6 tbspoon icing sugar
1 tsp Vanilla extract
Generous glug of Cointreau
Handful each of raspberries and strawberries
100g caster sugar
250g tub mascarpone

Put the strawberries and raspberries in a pan with the caster sugar and warm until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil and reduce the mixture if your strawberries are a bit watery. Allow to cool. Put the mascarpone in a bowl and add the icing sugar and vanilla extract. Mix to combine then add the cream and milk and mix well with a whisk. Add this mixture to your ice cream maker and churn until very thick and coming away from the sides. While the ice cream is churning push the fruit mix through a sieve to remove the seeds, then add the Cointreau and set aside. Once the ice cream has churned marble the fruity coulis through it and put in the freezer to set fully. Serve the ice cream with some buttery shortbread.

What I ate over Christmas!

 



 

Happy New Year! I hope you all had lots of festive fun and food over the holiday. I'm a little late, I know, at wishing everyone a happy new year but I've been back at work since the 28th December, so I've been busy. 

What did I eat over Christmas? Well, far too much is the short answer. It is a distinct possibility that Royal Mail will issue me with a post code all of my own any day now. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I have decided it's celery and a handful of laxatives all the way to June so I can slip into my two piece (don't try this at home kids!) I don't want Green Peace throwing buckets of water over me and desperately struggling to heft my bloated form off the beach and back into the sea as soon as I lie down on my beach towel. There will be WWF leaflet campaigns, telethons and rallies all because I ate two slices of Christmas cake and not just one.  

Before I get into all the good things I'm going to delicately chew 10 times before I swallow, I will recap on a few of the lovely, naughty things I gorged on.

Christmas day consisted of all the usual lovely things. A bronze turkey, moist and delicious served with freshly made cranberry sauce, chippolata sausages, crisp roast potatoes and parsnips, stuffing and brussels sprouts boiled and then fried in a little butter with breadcrumbs and chunky chopped brazil nuts. Christmas pudding then followed with rich brandy butter melting over the top.



I think my Dad went over the top a little and made about five puddings, so I took some back with me and made a nice dessert. I simply crumbled up the christmas pudding into small chunks and gently fried them in a little butter, then topped with some ice cream. I made the ice cream myself and flavoured it with a syrup made from orange zest, juice and brandy, but vanilla would work just as well, especially with a little brandy, cointreau or amaretto drizzled over the top. 



While I was at home for Christmas, Graeme decided to make some rocky road, a la Nigella Lawson. We had seen it on her Christmas programme and thought it looked really nice. I made him promise to leave me some for when I got back after Christmas. I tucked in as soon as I got through the front door and three pieces later I was feeling rather sick, but in wonder of the beautiful thing I had just consumed. It was DELICIOUS! 

The last thing I really enjoyed was on new year. I had never had goose before but was really keen to get one. We ordered one from our trusty farm shop and it was lovely. I think it was even more lovely because I just sat down and enjoyed it and didn't have anything to do with the cooking of it at all as I was at work all day. Sadly we didn't a good picture of it before carving but you can see from the gleaming carcass that there wasn't much left of it. 



The diet starts tomorrow, fingers crossed.