Lemon Ice Cream & Blueberry Sauce

You know those kitchen gadgets that you get, thinking you'll use but which end up just taking up space? I've had two of those. The bread maker, which did get used a few times but ended up acting as a shelf, got passed on to Duncan's mum. Who uses it a lot. The other gadget is, of course, an ice-cream maker. This was given to me by my brother for Christmas a year or so ago. I made one batch of ice cream from the recipes that came with it, then the bowl got put into storage in the freezer, the motor went into a cupboard, and I never used it again.

Well, until now. I don't remember which blog I got the link from, but this recipe for Cornstarch Ice Cream from the New York Times seemed like a good reason to get the machine out.

I pretty much followed the basic recipe, making the honey-jam variation, but using lemon curd in place of the jam. To be honest, this was so good that I would have been quite happy to pour the hot custard straight into a bowl and eat it. But I had to make do with sharing the scraping of the pan and jug with Duncan, after the bulk of it had gone into the machine to freeze.

The machine makes a very soft ice-cream, so one it had done its work, the ice-cream was transferred to a tub and into the freezer to firm up some more. And I started trying to think of what to put with it. I had some blueberries left in the fridge (from last week's non-blogged blueberry muffins), so made a warm blueberry sauce to spoon over.

And yes, I do have a number of other variations of this recipe I'd like to try. But maybe I should finish the tub of this that's still in the freezer first.

Recipes:

Lemon Ice Cream
1 carton double cream (284ml size) made up to 475ml with whole milk
Pinch salt
60g caster sugar
60ml honey
100ml whole milk
3 tablespoons cornflour/cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup (80ml, I didn't weigh it) lemon curd

Mix cream/milk mixture, salt, sugar and honey in a pan. Heat until it begins to steam.
Meanwhile, mix remaining milk with the cornflour until smooth.
Once the mixture in the pan is steaming, add the milk/cornflour mixture.
Cook, stirring, until it starts to thicken.
reduce heat to low and stir for about 5 minutes until thick.
Stir in vanilla.
Remove from heat and leave to cool slightly. When still slightly warm, stir in lemon curd.
When cold, transfer to an ice-cream machine and follow manufacturer's instructions.


Blueberry Sauce
100g blueberries
5g caster sugar
2 teaspoons water

Combine all ingredients in a pan. Cover and cook over a low heat until the blueberries have burst and you have a thick sauce.