Lilac Ice Cream

Fragrant and sweet. Who can resist this? Here’s what you will need:

• about 100 lilac florets
• 150ml milk
• 25g sugar
• pinch of salt
• 2 egg yolks
• 200ml heavy cream

Pick the florets off a bloom of lilac and rinse them. Warm the milk, sugar, salt and lilac florets in a small, heavy saucepan over a medium heat, stirring to dissolve. Remove from the heat when the milk is starting to steam and before it actually starts to simmer.

Taste at this point to check the level of lilac flavor, remembering that the flavor will dissipate somewhat with the addition of the other ingredients. For a stronger flavor, leave the mixture to infuse and taste periodically.

When ready, strain off the lilac florets and warm (but don’t simmer) the mixture again.

Break the egg yolks into a small bowl and stir them together. Gradually add some of the warmed milk to the yolks, stirring constantly, then add the warmed yolk and milk mixture back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk.

Cook the egg and milk mixture (or we can call it custard now) over a low heat, stirring frequently, until it’s thick enough to coat your spoon or spatula (this took me around 12 minutes or so). Now pour the custard mixture into the cream, stirring to combine.

Chill the mixture by sitting it in an ice bath and then freeze either using an ice cream maker, if you’ve got one, or as follows, if you don’t:

Put the mixture in a deep baking dish or bowl and place in the freezer. After about 45 minutes, once the mixture has started to freeze around the edges, remove the bowl and beat the mixture vigorously, using a whisk or a hand blender to break up any ice crystals that have started forming.

Return the mixture to the freezer and repeat this roughly every 30 minutes until the ice cream is frozen which, depending on your freezer, may take take 3-6 hours.

Instead of using sugar, it might be even more fun to sweeten the ice cream with Lilac Honey.

From: The Daily Spud