Cruel and Unusual Geography

Here’s a simple recipe for home-made ice cream that is very quick to make, doesn’t require any unusual ingredients or machinery, and is suitable for almost all diets. It’s dairy-based, so not suitable for those allergic or intolerant to dairy, lactose and the like, but is great for people with nut, egg, wheat/gluten, and other common allergies.

Vanilla ice cream

375ml (1 tin) evaporated milk
¾ cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Beat the evaporated milk until it is light and fluffy. I can usually achieve about 1.5 litres of volume, and oddly get more bulk when the egg beaters are on medium instead of flat out. Add the icing sugar and beat until well mixed. Add the vanilla, mix through quickly, pour into the freezing container and freeze until set. Enjoy.

That’s all. This recipe produces a light and versatile ice cream (see alternative recipes below) with a very creamy taste.

Notes

This recipe relies on everything being very cold. Some time before you start set your freezer to the coldest it will go, chill the ingredients (especially the milk) and freeze the mixing bowl and whatever you’re going to set the mixture in.

Having everything cold helps the mixture to freeze quickly and avoids it “falling” — it can sink in the middle and form a hard layer at the bottom if it doesn’t freeze fast enough.

Alternative recipes

Here’s a couple of alternatives that have proved popular in our house:

• Strawberry ice cream: replace the vanilla with a handful of strawberries (pulped and beaten well through the evaporated milk, so as to leave no icy chunks) and 2 teaspoons of strawberry essence.
• Caramel ice cream: replace the sugar and vanilla with ¾ of a 395g tin of caramel. You can buy tins of caramel, but I prefer to make my own. Take a tin of sweetened condensed milk, remove the label, and simmer it (unopened) for a good 3 hours. Take care to ensure it doesn’t boil dry!

Ingredients notes

In New Zealand the evaporated milk is usually the Carnation brand. In addition to milk this contains Carrageenan (from seaweed) as a thickening agent, but nothing else.

It used to be difficult to find gluten-free icing sugar, but most brands seem to have gone gluten-free in recent times.

We know many people who use artificial (vanilla “flavoured”) essence, but personally I just can’t bring myself to use anything but the real thing. Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I think it tastes better.