Small adventures in cooking - ice cream

Elderflower ice cream with lemon biscuits.

The problem with most ice cream recipes for many home cooks - myself included - is that they tend to be somewhat prohibitive. If you don't have an ice cream machine, then you are generally stuffed.

Yes, you can take your ice cream mix out of the freezer every half hour to give it a whisk but not everyone has the time or the patience. Happily, this ice cream requires no churning or mid-freeze whisking. It only takes 10 minutes to prepare, leaving you time to make the biscuits. Or you can just buy those...

Serves 6
600ml double cream
100ml elderflower cordial
100g icing sugar
juice of half a lemon

For the biscuits
100g softened butter
150g plain flour
2 tbsp sugar
zest of 1 lemon

To make the ice cream, tip the cream, cordial, icing sugar and lemon juice into a large bowl.

Whisk until stiff peaks form (the cream should sit up when flicked upwards with a whisk). Tip
into an ice cream tub and leave to set in the freezer for at least 4 hours, or overnight.

To make the biscuits, preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4. Rub the butter into the flour with your hands until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs, then mix in the sugar and lemon zest with a spoon until it forms a stiff dough. Lightly flour a work surface and roll out the dough to about half-a-centimetre thick. Trim the edges and cut into 12 fingers with a knife and put on a baking tray. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes until pale golden and remove. Leave to cool on a wire rack. (If, like me, you don't have one of these you can use one of the oven racks instead - the idea is to get some air underneath your biscuits to help them to crisp up.)

Store the biscuits in an airtight container until ready to use, at which point you can serve them alongside a few scoops of elderflower ice cream.

Recipe from Small Adventures in Cooking by James Ramsden (£14.99, Quadrille).