SUNDAY SUNDAE

Peach and Nectarine Ice Cream

Base:
1 litre milk
100 gr cornflour
400 gr sugar
an envelope of vanilla powder or a few drops vanilla essence [or you could use vanilla sugar]

Flavouring:
4 peaches
4 nectarines
300 gr sugar
juice of 1 lemon
1 litre water

Put all the base ingredients into a large pan and bring to the boil, stirring all the time. When no lumps remain and the sugar has dissolved remove the pan from the flame. Let the mixture cool. [You can speed this up by decanting it into another pan, which you stand in a bowl of iced water.]

When the base mixture is cool, pour boiling water over the fruits and leave them for about 5 mins. Then rinse them in cold water. You should now be able to just pull the peel off. Remove the stones and chop the flesh. I then purée this using a hand blender but you can push them through a sieve if you wish. Put the sugar in a pan with the water and lemon juice. Heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Pour this syrup onto the fruit purée. Mix well and let it all cool.

Now, in my opinion a lot of nonsense is written about ice cream making being difficult, requiring expensive machinery or, at the very least, strong arms to keep churning the ice cream during freezing. I have never had any bother getting it to freeze through and you shouldn't, either - provided you leave the mixture long enough, ie., overnight. But let's do a bit of churning for the hell of it: if you have an ice cream maker, then proceed according to its instructions; if you haven't, pour the cold mixture into plastic containers [this amount filled 2 x 500 gr and 1 x 250 gr containers] and put them in the freezer. After 20 mins or so, fork the mixture through, then do this again after 2 hours. You can do it several more times if you want to, but I honestly don't see the point. Ice cream making is meant to be fun!

When it's ready, scoop the ice cream out into nice glasses and decorate as you like.