Depending on how you calculate these things, today is either the first day of spring or it’s just the first of September – your call. Whichever way you look at it, the weather has been warming by just a few delicious degrees each week, and so our thoughts have begun to turn from the heavy winter puddings the Jam-maker’s been playing with (like the diabolically rich, bitter-chocolate self-saucing pudding he made for an impromptu dinner party), to lighter options. Like ice cream. You see, we’ve recently come into possession of a chest freezer, courtesy of my brother’s move from a tiny house to an apartment. I think the original idea was that our families would somehow share the use of the beast although how that was going to work with us living 16 kilometres apart no one has ever been able to properly explain. It’s presence in our basement has meant that we now finally have room to freeze the bowl of an ice cream maker we bought about four years ago. That small frozen silver bowl has lead the Jam-maker to some mouthwatering experimentation.
It all started Sunday before last when the Jam-maker decided to make some strawberry brulee tarts. He’s a huge fan of the Bourke Street Bakery Cookbook (in particular their recipe for an extraordinarily short pastry), but half an hour into it he began railing against the cookbook, its layout, the publishers, and the world at large, all of whom had all failed to indicate that the tarts would actually take more than two days to complete (what with resting of pastry and chilling of pastry cream overnight!). No brulee tarts for you!
This left him with a large quantity of strawberry coulis and the beginnings of a vanilla custard that he didn’t want to waste. After a few tweaks he ended up with a kind of vanilla custard that found its way into the ice cream maker. Yummy, but with a slightly gritty texture. The next night when I came home from work I was greeted with a tub of light as air, strawberry flavoured ice-confection. Oh my god. It was nothing like I’ve had before.
The Jam-maker created this stuff – no name yet (all suggestions gratefully received) – by combining Italian meringue (made by whipping soft ball sugar syrup into firm peaked beaten egg whites) with that leftover strawberry coulis. A turn in the ice-cream maker and bingo! Lloyd’s Luscious does ice-cream. And it’s low fat. Not low sugar sadly, but it could easily be made a little less calorie dense without risking any of the flavour or texture by using a little less sugar in the meringue and sweeter fruit for the syrup. The Jam-maker already has his sights set on further experimentation as the weather warms up. Bring on summer I say!
Lloyd's Luscious 