Polly's Ice-Cream Adventure...

After a summer of absolute neglect regarding my own culinary adventures and blogging I seem to be on a roll at the moment. Having survived our annual vacation and annual scout camp, I returned to work somewhat shell-shocked, but now it seems, thankfully, that I've rediscovered my enthusiasm for many of the things I genuinely enjoy...

Last Thursday, for instance saw a moment of inspiration. I'd been gathering bits and pieces and finally I had them all, or so I thought! As I lay out the ingredients for my latest adventure I was smugly satisfied that the Book of Sweet Things recipe for an orange ice-cream would fulfil one of my all time favourite cravings. I love ice-cream, as in proper ice-cream rather than iced-desserts (vegetable fat desserts more like!), but I am particularly fond of orange ice-cream.

The ingredients for this recipe are very simple, relying on a traditional custard base made from full cream Tullamore Dairies Milk,  5 Free-range Egg Yokes, the zest of an Orange (scrubbed to remove any unwanted wax or pesticides),and my own Vanilla Sugar to which you add 50g Bitter Marmalade. The lightly whipped Double Cream and Jaffa Cakes are added later on.

Had the been in a box it might have been easier to find them, but these were smashed up in a plastic bag that I'd confiscated from one of our younger scouts on the last day of our annual camp. Reluctant to share his booty with the rest of us he'd hidden them in the bottom of his rucsack and the resulting mess was going to be thrown away. A light bulb had suddenly lit up in my head, I could use them...

Once the custard had thickened my patience (or lack of it) isn't always a virtue at this point, and I resorted to transferring the custard into my trusty pyrex jug and then pluged it into cold water. I find this is so much quicker than waiting for my cast iron saucepan to cool!

Now it was time to fold in the whipped cream and pour the resulting mix into the ice-cream maker.
Quite honestly this is the best part of ice-cream making. Not only do you get to watch the fruit of your labour turn into your favourite dessert, but you also get to clean the utensils!

Sometime around half way through the churning process you're supposed to add the chopped/shredded/crushed jaffa cakes, mmmmh.... The recipe calls for four 'shredded' Jaffa Cakes, in my case I picked out four intact orange jelly discs and a large handful of powdered biscuit base crumbs and shards of dark chocolate to add to the mixture...


Needless to say we'd to be patient at this stage. This, of course, didn't prevent us from 'tasting' the partly frozen ice-cream , although you've to be quick unless you want your fingers caught by the agitator! Tastings aside we did manage to transfer at least six large portions into suitably sized bowl before we shut it into the deepfreeze for a while, just to finish off the freezing process.

I can't honestly remember what we had for dinner that night, but I do remember what we had for dessert! It was just lovely. Even writing about it now has got my taste buds tingling! Best of all though, I was happy in the knowledge that there were another couple of scoops left over for another day. Imagine then how disappointed I was, after a horrid day at work to discover that my eldest boy had devoured my only source of solace hence the absence of photo's!

To add insult to injury I was later presented with the plastic agitator. It was mangled and in an unusable condition, thanks to Tilley the Sheepdog who just loves to chew anything and everything she can get her teeth on. I don't know how she got hold of it, but until I can locate a replacement it looks as though my ice-cream making days are over...