Vivid! Blackberry Ice Cream

 

 

I so loved the colour of this ice cream when I served it. Let's be honest, ice cream can be a bit beige, even if it is the most gorgeous tasting thing, and I loved the fact that this ice cream screamed anything but; lively, bright, vivid!

 

Now I have made room in my freezer for my ice cream churn, I am experimenting with ice cream and seeing if I can come up with something pretty lovely, after discovering that you can make pretty nice, refreshing ice cream without making a custard, such as using condensed milk and cream here. I decided to use yoghurt as a kind of lighter, refreshing alternative, despite loving the unctuous creamy ice cream.

 

So, I bought some 2% fat yoghurt (hoping that it wouldn't be so grainy after churning and God, I need some fat!) Fage Total and unearthed some frozen blackberries from the freezer that have been in there for too long actually. I cooked the blackberries down with sugar, a splosh of blackberry liqueur from my 'When I go to France, I buy interesting liqueurs in Carrefour before boarding the ferry' stash and some salt and then passed it through a sieve and then boiled the juice so it became perceptibly thicker and syrupy. Added to the yoghurt, the juice swirls and goes from something dark and intense to something richly purple. And delish!

 

Blackberry Ice Cream

 

Makes about a litre of ice cream, ish.

 

Ingredients:

 

500g blackberries (Mine were frozen, and I let them defrost a little to generate some juice)

50g sugar added gradually, but be prepared to add more depending on the tartness of the blackberries

A pinch of salt to taste

A splosh of blackberry liqueur (optional)

A 500g tub of 2% Greek yoghurt

 

Method:

 

 

 

Put the blackberries into a pan with a splosh of water and some of the sugar. Cook over a gentle heat allowing the blackberries to break down and the sugar dissolve. Taste the juice and add some more of the sugar so that eventually you taste, well, sweetened blackberry.

 

Once the sugar has dissolved, pass the blackberry mixture through a fine sieve to separate the juice from the seeds. Discard the residue in the sieve and place the sieved juice back into a pan. Add a little liqueur if you like.

 

 

 

 Boil the juice rapidly until it becomes syrupy. When it has thickened perceptibly, carefully taste the syrup again. Add a little salt to bring out the blackberry flavour. You want something strongly flavoured as the flavour will diminish when added to the yoghurt and when it is frozen.

 

 

 

Set up your ice cream maker and pour in the yoghurt. Then add the juice and churn. I churned for about half an hour, forty minutes.

 

Put the half frozen mixture into a suitable tub and put in the freezer to continue the freezing process.

 

 

Vivid!