Make instant icecream with frozen fruit

Press, 12 February 1986, Page 17

Make instant icecream with frozen fruit

I came back from California just before Christmas with an unusual, easy and perfectly delicious icecream recipe. It takes about one minute from the time you assemble the ingredients until the icecream is ready to eat. While there are many different summer fruits to choose from, you should experiment to see which flavours you like best, then freeze these fruits in two cup quantities so you can make this whenever you feel like it, right through the year. 1 have made it with strawberries, raspberries, boysenberries, loganberries, apricots and nectarines. I look forward to trying it with different fruit mixtures as well. It is important to freeze the fruit free-flow. When you tip the frozen fruit into the food processor bowl it should be in individual small pieces or cubes, about the size of a raspberry or strawberry. For 3 to 4 servings you need: 2 cups frozen fruit (see above) 14 cup castor sugar about Vs cup cream, or top milk, or milk, or yoghurt Assemble all ingredients and serving plates. Put the frozen fruit in a food processor (fitted with

Alison Hoist’s

Food Facts

the metal chopping blade.) Turn on (to high speed) and process for about 15 seconds, or until the fruit is pulverised into frozen, dry-looking, dustlike particles. For the first few seconds this will be a verv noisy operation. Tip the castor sugar through the feed tube. Add the liquid of your choice through the feed tube, while the motor is going. (At this stage I use the puls; button.) You may find you need to mix the fruit from the top of the bowl into the lighter mixture near the bottom, once during this process. Stop adding the liquid as soon as the mixture looks like icecream. Serve immediately. This whole operation should take between 30 and 60 seconds. You can put the finished icecream in the freezer for 15-30 minutes if you want to, but icecream made from some

fruit goes icy and deteriorates if frozen for long. Experiment for yourself using different liquids or mixtures of liquids. I usually use cream. The lower fat liquids make lighter icecreams which melt faster. Note: If you do not have castor sugar, put % cup of regular sugar in the dry food processor bowl before the fruit Process it until it is fine and dusty. Put the fruit into the bowl on top of this, then add the liquid, as above. Malt thins I really like malt flavoured mixtures. This recipe makes about 40 thin, crisp, malt-flavoured biscuits. Malt can sometimes be difficult to work with, when stirred with oil or butter, so I add the slightly warmed malt after the dry ingredients have been added. The warm malt makes the uncooked mixture puffy — just ignore this and put the mixture on the baking tray in teaspoonsful, without stirring the mixture any more. To prevent the biscuits burning as they cook, heat the oven at a higher temperature than you use to bake the biscuits, and turn it down as the biscuits are put in. Using this technique you are less likely to burn the bottoms or edges of the biscuits. 125 g butter, y 4 cup sugar, 1 rounded household tablespoon golden syrup, cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 rounded household tablespoon malt Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup over moderate heat until the mixture bubbles. Remove from the heat and

cool to lukewarm. While it cools measure the flour and baking soda in a sifter or sieve, and heat the malt until it is warm and runnier. Do not heat it until it bubbles. Stir the sifted flour and soda into the cooled butter mixture. When well combined add the malt and stir quickly until evenly mixed. Put teaspoon lots of the mixture on a lightly greased oven tray, leaving room for spreading. (Work with two teaspoons pushing mounds from one teaspoon with the other. It does not matter if the mounds are not perfectly even.) Preheat the oven at 180 C. Turn the oven down to 170 C when the first tray goes in. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Biscuits will rise, then flatten, then darken slightly in colour all over, then darken round the edges. Remove from the oven before the edges darken. Press the edges of joined or unevenly shaped biscuits back into shape while biscuits are hot and easily shaped. Lift from the oven tray when partly cool. Finish cooling on a rack. When cold, store in airtight jars. You should get 40-50 biscuits (about 6cm across) from this mixture.