WELL WHO WOULD have thought it, after 18 months of tough, tough times battling a pandemic, along comes a heatwave. It may not have cured all our ills, but let’s be honest, it has been a welcome relief after a long and isolating winter.
With the scorching temperatures, there’s suddenly a run on suncream, fans and of course everyone’s favourite, ice-cream. There’s nothing nicer than sitting in the sun or a shady spot on a gorgeous day enjoying a cold treat.
If you’ve exhausted all avenues locally and have grown fed up with the 99′s or the many brands we’ve become used to, why not try your hand at creating some homemade cold treats?
Below, you’ll find a selection of easy, fast and tasty recipes to cool you down as the warm summer (hopefully) progresses.
Makes 8-10
Ingredients
100g caster sugar
100ml water
225g fresh raspberries
juice 2 lemons
500ml tonic water
Method
In a medium-sized pot, add the sugar, water, raspberries and lemon juice and heat until the sugar is dissolved and the raspberries are soft.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Add the tonic water and mix.
Strain this mixture and pour into your Ice-pops moulds with stick and freeze overnight.
Simply de-mould and enjoy!
Top tip: To cut down on the sugar, you can use soda water instead of tonic water.
This is a no-churn vanilla Ice-cream, layered with Irish strawberries and oat crumble
Serves 6-8
Ice-cream
2 medium free-range eggs
6 free-range egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla essence
200g caster sugar
800ml single cream
250g Clarke’s diced strawberries
Few drops red food colouring (optional)
Crumble
40g plain flour
15g porridge oats
25g butter
75g caster sugar
Method
For the crumble, preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan.
In a bowl, mix the flour, oats, sugar and butter and with your fingertips, mix until a sandy texture is reached.
Place this on a lined tray and into the oven for 10 minutes or until golden brown. You will need to stir the crumble mix throughout baking to ensure it cooks evenly.
Set aside to cool
For the Ice-cream, whip the cream and place back into the fridge to keep cold.
Pop the eggs, yolks, vanilla and sugar in a heatproof bowl and set this over a pot of gently simmering water and whisk continuously until doubled in size, thick and glossy.
Remove from the heat and whisk until cold.
Fold through the whipped cream and finally the small diced strawberries.
At this point if you want a richer colour you can add 2 drops of red food colouring, this is completely optional.
Spoon half the mix into a 2lb loaf tin and sprinkle on some crumble mix, cover this with the remaining ice-cream mix and top with the remaining crumble.
Pop this into the freezer overnight to firm up.
To serve, remove the Ice-cream from the freezer about 20 minutes before you wish to serve.
Scoop into chilled bowls and serve with some fresh strawberries.
Top tip: This mix can be poured into lollipop moulds and served as strawberry Ice-pops also.
Serves 10
Ingredients
125g raspberries
125g halved blueberries
100g chopped strawberries
25g icing sugar
500ml single cream
1 tin condensed milk (397g)
dash vanilla essence
pinch salt
Method
In a medium bowl, add the berries and icing sugar. Mix and allow to sit for 20 minutes.
This will allow the natural juices to come out from the berries.
In another bowl, whisk the cream until stiff peak.
To this add the condensed milk and salt and re-whisk.
Once the berries have sat for 20 minutes using the back of a kitchen fork, begin to mush and break down the berries.
Fold the berry mix into the cream and spoon this into a 2 lb loaf tin and place in the freezer overnight.
To serve, remove from the freezer 10 minutes before you wish to serve. Simply scoop into wafer cones and enjoy!
Top tip: If you line the 2 lb tin with a double layer of clingfilm, you can de-mould the frozen Ice-cream and serve it in slices as a mixed berry terrine for dessert.
Shane Smith has nearly 22 years’ experience working in some of the world’s most celebrated pastry kitchens across the globe. Over these years he has received numerous award from “Best Bakery Manager in Ireland”-Shelf life magazine to “The top 10 best pastry chefs in Ireland” Food & Wine Magazine. Shane also has a regular cookery slot on RTÉ on The Today Show. More at www.chefshanesmith.ie.
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