frozen & fruity

Here in Christchurch we had some beautiful hot days over Christmas, which inspired me to haul out my ice cream maker and churn up some frozen treats. An ice cream maker is one of those pieces of kitchen equipment that seldom earns its keep...I bought my commercial style one a couple of years ago when I was selling puddings at the farmer's market and had visions of selling ice cream during the summer.


Given the cost of my machine it would be fair to say that the cost per batch of my homemade ice cream is still on the high side, but since making some lately I was reminded of how easy it it to make, especially when not using a custard based recipe which is more fuss. There are some really cheap machines on the market now too, which certainly do the trick.

The first ice cream is boysenberry, but you can use the recipe with any berries you like, or a mixture is good. I haven't tried making it without a machine, but it would probably work well too if you froze the mix and placed it in the freezer, removing after a couple of hours to beat some air into it.

Easy Berry Ice cream


500g berries
250ml milk
1 1/4 c sugar
250ml cream

Place berries and sugar in the food processor and mix until smooth. Pour in combined milk and cream mix and pulse until well blended. Pour into an ice cream machine and churn as per usual.

Another easy recipe we made was banana frozen yoghurt, delicious topped with chocolate sauce, but also really good on its own as a reasonably healthy treat. Banana flavoured foods are often quite fake tasting, (with the exception of Cyclop's banana yoghurt - so good!) so it is a nice thing to make yourself. This mixture froze really solidly so is best eaten freshly churned. It would work well poured into moulds to make ice blocks, or scooped into a smoothie with berries and banana.

banana frozen yoghurt (from Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion)

300ml greek yoghurt
350g banana, mashed
juice of 1 lemon
100g sugar
100ml water

Combine sugar and water and boil until sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes, you should have about 1/2 cup of sugar syrup, cool. Place banana and lemon juice in the food processor and blend well until smooth, add the yoghurt and sugar syrup and blend again briefly to combine. Pour into ice cream machine and churn as per usual.