This one is not for the faint-hearted. Literally. This is indeed the richest ice cream we have ever made.

Thibault again deserves the credit for the idea, suggesting both toffee and banana for an impulsive ice cream last Sunday in Newcastle.

Now, I know your mouth is watering for the full account of our Hebridean ice cream adventures, but it’s going to take us a bit longer to compile all the recipes, pictures and video. In the meantime, eat your heart out with one of the most mind-blowingly delicious ice cream recipes yet.

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Before the outstanding account of our ice-cream adventures in the Hebrides, here is another recipe we did a few weeks ago and forgot to mention.

Last time I was shopping in Real Food, I saw chunks of marzipan they were selling by weight. The idea of incorporating this sweet treat into a big batch of ice cream immediately struck me, and I decided to buy a bag of 500g.

For a reason I do not understand, many people were a bit dubious about trying this new flavour, but notwithstanding incredulity, Peter and I decided to try.

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To accompany the Marzipan Ice Cream, I thought we should publish the best pancake recipe ever! I’m not talking crêpes. These are big, fluffy American-style pancakes. Marzipan Ice Cream, I thought we should publish the best pancake recipe ever! I’m not talking crêpes. These are big, fluffy American-style pancakes. My mom gave me this recipe in her wonderful little book titled “Mother’s Recipes for Peter”. I’m not sure where she got it, but it is worth repeating here. It works best with good quality buttermilk.

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In less than seven hours we depart for our biggest ice cream adventure yet! Thibault and Celine and I will be taking the White Mountain to Iona tomorrow. We’ll make a nice batch of coconut and chocolate there for Celine’s birthday.

Then on Saturday Dr. Big D will join us in Oban to catch the ferry to Barra and we’ll cycle the length of the Outer Hebrides, making ice cream along the way! Stay tuned for all the excitement…

So first night back to Geneva and a party is on at the Boisserette. I have been threatening to leave the straight and narrow paths of the Russell recipe and the Big D sciences and so tonite it shows. I didnt quite go the whole hog but subbed in some Coop Uht cream instead of fresh cream. I really wanted to know how much this would affect the flavour. The reality is UHT milk and cream is much more prevalent here than fresh dairy, and it is all much more expensive than the subsidized meadows of Britain. I haven’t actually found any cream here that isn’t high temperature pasteurized - the small step back from full throttle dairy cooking. Recipe used was actually close to a Russell.Results? Consistency was excellent, really smooth and creamy. The flavour was however slightly UHT influenced - it had that sugery condensed flavour at the edges, not at all unpleasant though, just different from my perspective. Most peopl here drink UHT any way and every one was a newbie to the Triple Motion so were all curious and delighted. The ice cream was eaten with Mango Lassi on the side - great combo but masked the simplicity of the vanilla batch.When the local audience has matured a bit onto the delicacies i should try a head to head full Migros Budget UHT cream and milk vs fresh dairy?  

Though our chocolate gelato recipe produces an incredible result, it’s an awful lot of work and takes a long time to prepare and chill before you can freeze it. I eventually decided that there is no reason why the Russell Recipe should not produce a quality chocolate ice cream.

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When I was a kid I did not like chocolate ice cream. Strange as it seems now, I didn’t really have any interest in the stuff. If I was given a serving of Neapolitan ice cream I would devour the pink and white stripes as quickly as possible to avoid accidentally eating any meltings from the brown stripe. Don’t get me wrong, I always loved chocolate, especially dark chocolate. I didn’t even understand why I didn’t like chocolate ice cream.

And then several years ago I went to Italy. Italians don’t mess around with ice cream. True Italian gelato can be found in few places in the world, but in Italy there seems to be a law requiring at least one quality gelateria in every square mile. Naturally, I did my best to try them all. But after 4 or more triple-scoop cones per day for a couple weeks, I admitted defeat. It would take me several lifetimes to sample every flavour in every gelateria. But along the way, I came across something very exciting: delicious chocolate gelato!

I asked Aunt Nancy if she knew how to make chocolate ice cream, but she said Mike and Sam had tried to use chocolate milk in the Russell recipe and had unsatisfying results. This caused me to question my firm lifelong belief that the Russell Recipe never fails. (Note: Lately I have reconfirmed this undeniable truth by making a successful chocolate and coconut ice cream with the Russell Recipe…)

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This weekend we embarked on a flavour experiment inspired by my brother Tim, who is the Chef de Cuisine at Tru Restaurant in Chicago. Just before Christmas, I took my cousin Sam, his wife Brie, and my other brothers and sister to dine in his amazing restaurant. The third course of the evening was a selection of red and yellow beets with celery, tomato, and chocolate. I was most impressed by the combination of beetroot purée with chocolate shavings.

Big D and I have been talking about making a beetroot sorbet for the better part of the last year. We had always imagined adding black pepper, but Tim’s dish got me thinking differently. When four beetroots arrived in our veg-box this week, I suggested we finally tackle the recipe.

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Last May Big D took me to the Vintner Rooms in Leith for dinner with his mum… That could be interesting enough in itself, but what we’re talking about here is frozen dessert.When it came to the pudding course, I ordered “blueberry vacherin glacé with raspberry coulis”, which the italian guy told me meant blueberry sorbet. I had to see if it lived up to my own skills. While I patiently waited, the waiter prepared “crepes suzette” for Big D’s mother right at our table, slowly caramelizing sugar using a little bit of lemon over an open flame. Quite a little performance indeed. But my blueberry sorbet was yet to come…

Soon I was looking at a small purple cylinder on top of some crunchy meringue (apparently this is what makes it “vacherin”) with a decoration of raspberry sauce (the “coulis”). Suspiciously, I dipped my spoon into the delicate cylinder and lifted a taste to my lips…. A wonderful blueberry flavour in a deliciously smooth sorbet! I could have dispensed with all the extra-fancy-french bits (like the meringue, etc.), which didn’t really do it any favours, but I was suitably impressed.

Of course we intended to make a trip to the highlands in August to gather wild bilberries and make our own sorbet in the hills, but for some reason we never managed to do the trip.

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