Rich lemon ice cream (or what to do with yolks left over from pavlova)

When Victoria is in the middle of one of our hottest starts to a year on record, could I really have made anything other than ice-cream for my first post of 2012?

This is an incredibly rich ice-cream recipe that my mother has been making for years, initially as way of using up egg yolks left over from one of the giant 8 egg pavlovas she would make for family barbeques. Later on this ice-cream was the most requested dessert dish from visiting friends and family, so the pavlovas ended up being made as a way of using up leftover egg whites.

The recipe comes from one of the books in mum’s collection of oddly specific cookbooks – Woman’s Day All Colour Book of Cooking for Your Freezer, published in 1978. Some of the other gems in this recipe book include frozen sardine and tomato sauce sandwiches, some kind of nasty looking grey lump thing wrapped in incredibly shiny bacon and "tacky gingerbread". I found a total of 2 vegetarian dishes through the whole book, each involving cabbage and jam...

I'd like to tell you what that yellow frozen cake covered in either grapes or olives is meant to be, but the cake only exists on the cover, no recipe in the book seems to match up...

The book does have good ice-cream recipes though. Unfortunately the book is a little sketchy on method, so the method I have provided is the way my mum has always made this ice-cream and not how the book tells it.

Rich Lemon Ice Cream.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups caster sugar
• 8 egg yolks
• 1 1/4 cups cream
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice

Method

1. Heat oven to 150 degrees.
2. Line an oven tray with foil and spread the sugar out over the foil.
3. Place the sugar in the oven to heat the sugar. You will need to check the sugar regularly and shake the pan to ensure the sugar doesn't burn. With my oven it took around 5 minutes till I was happy the sugar was heated through.
4. Place egg yolks in an electric mixed bowl with the beaters running at low speed.
5. With the beaters still running, carefully pour the sugar into the mixer while it is still as hot as possible. The sugar is going to cook your yolks for your custard.
6. Once the sugar is all in the bowl, increase the speed to high and beat till the mix is pale and thick.
7. In a separate bowl beat the cream till it has thickened and forms soft peaks.
8. Mix the lemon juice and the egg mix into the cream.
9. Pour into a 1.25 litre container and freeze (or use an ice-cream maker to freeze if you have one).

This ice-cream is very rich and is best served in small portions or as a compliment to a larger dessert. With so many egg yolks the ice-cream always comes out a beautiful golden yellow colour. The ice-cream freezes very soft, so there is no need to leave it on the bench to soften before serving.

We have also in the past used this ice cream base for different flavours and have found that it is too rich a base for anything other than tart citrus. Orange and lime have worked ok, but lemon has always worked the best.

Hope you had a great new years and a fantastic year in 2012!