ICE, ICE BABY

Happy New Year to all our readers and what better way to start 2013 than with ice cream! I've waited until now to share this post with you because having made the ice cream we chose to save it for Christmas day, which is always a big family affair in our household and meant everyone would get a taste.

Way back on a warm Summer's day a crate of over ripe peaches landed in the kitchen; between the family we managed to scoff a good few of them but the left overs gave me a chance to experiment. My usual source of inspiration is the internet but peach cakes and peach cobblers and peach pies just weren't grabbing my attention, then I came across the most beautiful food blog Tartelette and a stunning recipe for Roasted Peaches and Lavender Ice Cream.

Queue some rejigging of the recipe - skip the lavender, make it a little less calorie heavy, oh and minor detail, I don't own an ice cream machine and hey presto I found myself spending a whole afternoon (no exaggeration this takes 4-6 hours) making Roasted Peach and English Blossom Honey Ice Cream.

If you click the Tartelette link it will take you back to the original recipe but I have included my own version below:

6 peaches
250ml whole milk
250ml light coconut milk
250ml fat free yoghurt
5 tablespoons of honey
A handful of sugar

Preheat the oven to 200C

Cut the peaches in half and remove the stone.

Cover a small plate with sugar and push the flesh into the crystals. Place in a roasting tin sugar side up.

Drizzle the honey over and roast in the oven until golden brown and soft (I turned my peaches a few times just to keep them coated in the honey and juice syrup that was forming in the bottom of the tin)

Call me fussy but once the peaches were sufficiently cooled I removed the skin; there's no real need for this it just depends on your preference for the texture of the ice cream and I wanted mine to be smooth and creamy.

In a large saucepan over a medium heat, gently warm the milk, coconut milk and yoghurt until they are just at the point of boiling. Remove from the heat and leave to cool completely. I would recommend refrigerating to speed this part up!

Once everything is completely cooled add the peaches to the milk base and mash with a potato masher.

This is the point where if you're lucky enough to have an ice cream machine you pop it in and let it do the hard work. Now the true commitment to the cause begins.

I separated my mixture into two large plastic containers, both need to fit easily into your freezer. Place in the freezer for 45 minutes, remove and whisk (definitely with an electric whisk and the most robust fitting you have, it's easy now but anything flimsy will not work at the later stages)

From now on every 30 minutes you have to remove your ice cream from the freezer and whisk, for the simple reason that you are not trying to produce an ice cube but rather a smooth and well blended mixture. How many times you will have to do this depends on how good your freezer is but you will get to a certain point where the mixture no longer looks whisk-able and it is at this point that you can either leave it to freeze or eat it!

If like us you choose to save yours until later you will need to remove the ice cream from the freezer and pop it into the fridge for several hours to soften up.

Bon apetit!