Friday... time to make ice cream

A tea cup is perfect for serving ice cream and now I have the
perfect  excuse to buy more beautiful little tea cups.

So we started a very sweet tradition here, making ice cream to welcome the weekend. 

Of course, I know that lots of the ice cream at the supermarket is absolutely fine for a gluten free diet, but I stumbled across the most simple and delicious ice cream recipe on Pinterest.  I'm not linking to one particular version here because there are so many of them.  Instead, I'm sharing my version of it. 

It starts with just two ingredients, a 300ml pot of double cream (not the extra thick stuff, just regular double cream) and a standard 397g tin of condensed milk.  Don't stress if the ones you buy are a slightly different weight/volume.  This isn't one of those precise recipes.  This is a what-have-I-got-in-the-cupboard kind of a recipe.

Whisk the double cream to soft peaks.  Mix the condensed milk with your other liquid ingredients and then mix that gently into the double cream.  Add your other ingredients and mix gently.

Resist the urge to eat more than a little scrape of the bowl and spoon it all into a plastic tub.  Freeze for at least 6 hours.  You can churn it if you like and you have the equipment, but it doesn't add anything except perhaps to speed up the freezing.

Now for the best bit, adding flavour.  So far, we have made peanut butter ice cream, Nutella ice cream, lemon meringue ice cream and mint choc chip ice cream.

For peanut butter ice cream:
Add about a cup of peanut butter and a tablespoon of golden syrup to the condensed milk.  Add a couple of chopped up Snickers bars (chop them quite small) and some chocolate chips at the end.  We added in Cadbury Caramel Buttons too and it was beyond delicious.

For Nutella ice cream:
Just mix about a cup of Nutella with the condensed milk.  That's it.  If dietary restrictions allow, I imagine this would be incredible with smashed up Ferrero Rocher in it.  We can't have them but I like to think of someone out there scoffing it on my behalf.

For lemon meringue ice cream:
Add about half a jar of lemon curd (I used Sainsbury's Taste the Difference) to the condensed milk.  Add smashed up meringue (I used 4 regular nests from the supermarket) at the end.  Put a third into your tub, swirl over some more lemon curd, repeating twice more with the remaining ice cream.  Sprinkle over another smashed meringue.

Lemon meringue ice cream, ready for the freezer.

For mint choc chip ice cream:
Add 1 tablespoon of peppermint essence to the condensed milk.  If you like it green, add a few drops of green colouring as well.  Add a couple of crumbled Flakes and about half a box of finely chopped mint Matchmakers at the end.

And please, don't be limited to the flavours we've had time to try.  If salted caramel hits the spot for you, stir some in.  If you crave chocolate ice cream, melt some milk or dark chocolate as preferred and stir in the condensed milk.  And don't forget cookie dough, vanilla choc chip, honeycomb... so many flavours to try.  Up next for us is raspberry ripple and Bounty bar coconut and chocolate.  Yum.